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18BS 



I 




THE 



TRIUMPH OF LIFE: 



A BIBLICAL STUDY OF GOB'S WAY 
WITH OUB BACE. 




NEW YORK . 
JOHN B. ALDEN. PUBLISHER. 
1886. 



P REFA CE. 



The key to the unity of theme in the 
following chapters will be found in an 
attempt to maintain the doctrine of con- 
ditional immortality, and to outline, in 
part, its adjustment to orthodoxy old and 
new. 

I have made but little reference to 
modern writers, either those whom I oppose 
or those with whom I agree. This has 
been for the sake of brevity, and not from 
any affectation of independence. Indeed 
perhaps it is best in these days of many 
books to lay no claim to originality beyond 
the order of one's thoughts. 

My Scripture citations are generally from 
the Eevised Version. 

Hartford, MwcL 1886 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

I. ... The Victory of Death. 

II. . . . Life by God Eevealed in Promise. 

III Is Life Indefeasible. 

IV. . " Life" and " Death" in the Old Testament. 

V. " Life" and " Death" in the New Testament 
Epistles. 

VI. "Life" and "Death" in the Gospels and 
Revelation. 

VII. . . Life by God Revealed in Humanity. 

VIII Infant Life. 

IX Life of the Heathen. 



X. Resurrection Life.— Note on the History of 
the Resurrection Idea. 

XL The Judgment.— Note on the Second Coining 



of Christ. 

XII. . The Symbolism of Fire in the Scriptures. 

XIII Future Punishment, 

XIV. . Opinions of Some Early Christian Fathers 
XV The Triumph of Life. 



THE TEITJMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE L 

THE VICTORY OF DEATH. 

For it was necessary that at first, nature should be 
exhibited; then after that, that what was mortal should 
be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and 
the corruptible by incorruptibility; and that man 
should be made after the image and likeness of God, 
having received the knowledge of good and evil. 

— Ireneus, iv. 38. 

It is a just inference from the Scriptures 
that God made man potentially immortal in 
his entire nature; that is, that he made him 
capable of developing into an immortal life 
without death as we now know it, and as it 
happens to the brute creation. It is com- 
monly said that death comes to man as a ne- 
cessity of nature, that birth involves death, and 
that it must have been so from the first. And 
some, who wish to square this with the con- 
ditional threat of death, affirm that God, fore- 
seeing man's sin, prepared by anticipation his 
death as its penalty, and do not allow any 
potency of physical immortality to have been 
in man at all. It is forgotten that in the mind 
of a divine Creator there must be a higher on- 
tology than the science of animate life. And 



8 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



though birth now involves death, creation does 
not involve death. 

Man was not made a mere animal, and it is 
entirely conceivable and reasonable to suppose 
that what was added to his animal nature had 
power over it in connection with a constant 
spiritual relation of this added part to its Au- 
thor, sufficient to transfigure the physical and 
control the unfolding of the immortal without 
the loathsome decay of the animal. 

Indeed, take the glorious life of heaven as 
the goal, and take man in his primal purity, 
can any one doubt for a moment that had the 
purity remained, the love, wisdom and power 
of God would have found a smoother and more 
joyous way thither than the present? The 
reasonable presumption is the same as the 
natural inference from the Bible narrative. 

The first chapters of the book of Genesis 
contain an ideal view of man, which covers his 
relation to life, to good and evil, to himself as 
twofold, i. e., man and woman, and to the world 
he inhabits. This ideal view gives us truth, 
gives us facts, but not probably the facts of 
the historian, but those which lie back of his- 
tory in potencies and relations. 

Not all minds are equally prepared to receive 
and appreciate such truth, but the opening 
chapters of Genesis are without parallel in 
adaptedness to convey truth to minds accord- 
ing to their capacity to receive it , and to exhibit 
more and more truth as capacity increases. 



THE VICTORY OF DEATH. 



9 



The child and the savant in art look upon 
the same picture, they see the same things, 
and yet how differently they see, you learn 
from their reports of it, which may be equally 
true. 

Genesis presents a picture drawn once for all 
for the whole race. All see truth in it, all 
may make mistakes in their understanding and 
reports of it. 

Man's possible immortality in his whole na- 
ture is one of the things we see in it. One 
may pass it as a thought of little moment. 
But we place immeasurable importance upon 
the revelation of the incoming of things to our 
race which became permanent. The intima- 
tions also of what might have been, certainly 
deserve attention. 

The biblical evidence of such superior possi- 
bilities in man at the outset are found, first, 
in the way in which his creation is distin- 
guished from that of the brutes. While they 
are simply evolved by the divine Word from 
previous material as " Let the waters bring 
forth/' "Let the earth bring forth," God said: 
"Let us make man in our image after our 
likeness." 

We cannot affirm the limits of this likeness, 
but, that it should have extended to a con- 
trolling energy over the animal constitution is 
easy to believe; in fact, it is almost imposssible 
not to believe it. 

In the second account of the creation, Gen. 



10 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the manner in which man is made a living 
soul marks him off from mere animal life with 
the same distinctness. 

His life is breathed into him by the personal 
inspiration of God himself. This suggests a 
personality derived from God directly, and the 
inspiring breath which in God could create a 
personal being, it is easy to suppose, when 
seated in man, and retained in harmony with 
God, would have a vivifying, and transmuting 
power, able to evolve the immortal within the 
animal without its sudden and entire decay. 
We can partly illustrate this idea by the present 
power of mind over body, still more by the 
supposed results upon human life, of absolute 
virtue and obedience to the laws of health con- 
tinued through successive generations. What 
our bodies are able to endure now of abuse, and 
what in spite of it they are able to achieve is a 
great marvel. Physicians affirm that the great- 
er part of the blood of the race is tainted from 
alcohol or narcotics or the effects of lewd- 
ness. 

And when you add the numberless violations 
of the laws of health in our artificial living, 
in labor and the pursuits of ambition and pleas- 
ure, and the results of violence between man 
and man, the wonder is not that life has its 
ills and is short, but rather that it has anything 
but ills. 

Conceive all this reversed. Imagine that from 
generation to generation perfect virtue and wis- 



THE VICTORY OF DEATH. 11 



dom should prevail in the treatment of the body, 
that the activities of healthful industry should 
be shared by all, and excesses of toil and pleas- 
ure be banished, in other words that right- 
eousness be the absolute and joyously adopted 
rule of all — but you say: This is talking of 
something unearthly. Very true, it would be 
an unearthly condition of character for man, 
and it would just as certainly produce an un- 
earthly condition of health and life. 

Death would lose half its pains and terrors, 
yes, ninety-nine hundredths of them; and yet 
we have supposed nothing more than the effect 
of physiological laws. This line of thought, 
I say, illustrates what power the soul of man, 
as it came from the breath of God, might have 
had over the body, had it abode in God, in- 
stead of wandering into sin. 

Indeed, in an ideal picture of man absolute 
innocence could be associated only with in- 
corruptibility of his physical as well as his 
spiritual nature. 

The length of life attributed to the Ante- 
diluvians shows the idea of the author of the 
narrative to be that death asserted its power 
but slowly in the first age, when the corrupt- 
ing agencies had not had time to multiply and 
intensify. 

The method of removal from earth of Enoch, 
Elijah and Moses must be regarded as giving 
perfect or partial examples of euthanasy by 
transformation instead of corruption, being 



12 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



thus at least qualified remissions of the sentence 
of death. 

Through Paul we have the promise that 
those living at the last coming of the Lord 
shall take on their immortality without the 
sleep of death. What can this be but a sud- 
den unfolding of that which has always been 
germinantly in man. Were this change assur- 
ed to one of us at the present day, he would 
no longer look upon himself as mortal in the 
ordinary sense. In fact, the whole doctrine 
of the Eesurrection set forth as wrought by 
Christ in undoing the work of Adam, carries 
with it the implication that man was made 
with the elements of immortality in his whole 
being. 

Above all, the transformation of Christ's 
body demonstrates the latent capacity of our 
nature when in harmonious association with 
God. His body saw no corruption, but was 
translated into the celestial body. The exam- 
ples also which the lower creation shows of 
life rising from lower to higher grades and a 
new element without entire physical decay — the 
butterfly from the worm — are more than 
symbols of this change; they reveal a law of the 
divine working. Should He care for the worm 
and not for man? 

This view of primitive man is as old at least 
as the second century, as will appear below in 
the quotation from Theophilus in the chapter 



THE VICTORY OF DEATH. 13 



on the opinions of the Fathers. Augustine 
maintains it in many passages in his City of 
God, and his anti-Pelagian writings, though 
he seems to make the means of it objective 
through the tree of life. Thus, xiii, 1., he 
says, "He had so made them (our first parents) 
that if they discharged the obligations of 
obedience, an angelic immortality and a blessed 
eternity might ensue without the intervention 
of death." 

Students of the Bible have found this view 
consistent with the conditional threat of 
death, which carried with it, of necessity, a 
promise of life to follow obedience. 

What now took place when man sinned? 
It had been said to him: "In the day thou 
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Did he 
die in that day? We think he did. If the 
death of the body merely was meant, Adam 
had a very long reprieve. But that he re- 
garded himself as reprieved, or that God so 
regarded him, we have no evidence. He cer- 
tainly underwent a vast change in that day, a 
change that involved all the possibilities of 
death. He lost his oneness with the life-giving 
God. The spirit breathed into him of God 
dissevered itself from its author and had gone 
forth in a way of its own. The finite had let 
go its hold of the Infinite, and was in a way 
left to itself. In this was the beginning of all 
death. It was therefore death. 

All subsequent death was but the unfolding 



14 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



of that fatal change. The contagion of death 
once in man, it must spread through all de- 
partments of his being unless arrested. The 
body* was by it left to its animal properties 
which must wane and decay, when deprived 
of any sufficient antagonizing principle to 
exalt them; and the spirit was left to the con- 
demning sentence of God. 

Death as disseverment from God involved 
every possible sinking away and loss of estate, 
faculties, being. It was the loss of all as- 
surance of blessing, of all hope except in some 
new divine word. Thus in this first encounter 
death was allowed by the Creator to gain a 
victory over his work. It has been the favor- 
ite style to go outside of Scriptural language 
and call it the Fall of Man. Many have also 
been pleased to map out this event and its con- 
sequences as a federal headship in Adam for 
the race. 

Perhaps no harm is done by this if it 
be kept in mind that we are without any 
evidence that our first parents knew by any 
means that the moral condition of their de- 
scendants was made dependent upon them. 
But stripped of all fiction and figure, the sim- 
ple truth appears that God planned this world 
to be a sphere in which to unfold in the creature 
moral freedom, and then holiness through vol- 

*Hence, Augustine insists on the letter of Paul's 
words: "The body is dead because of sin," not merely 
mortal. De Genesi ad Litteram Lib, VI. ec, 24, 25, 



THE VICTOKY OF DEATH. 15 



untary choice and effort after the bitter taste 
of evil. 

Man's first innocence was the introduction 
to this administration, a kind of back ground 
on which to work. It was never designed to 
be anything more. God is represented as pre- 
paring the way for the great trial by himself 
creating the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil. The divine prevision took in the result 
of the appointed trial. It was certain to the 
mind of God without being a necessity forced 
upon man. The narrative of Eden saves God 
from being the author of a race necessarily 
sinful, but certainly makes it a part of his plan 
to use sin as a stepping stone to the quality 
and degree of the holiness he would display in 
his earth-born children. 

As a father places his infant of a few months 
upon its feet, and stepping back bids it come 
to him, knowing well that its first steps will 
not be without a fall, so God set our first par- 
ents to walk morally, knowing well that they 
would stumble and fall in the way, but would 
by his helping grace at length learn to walk 
uprightly. As my Baptist brother, Dr. Crane, 
late of Boston, has beautifully and truly said, 
"Man fell, but he fell into the arms of his 
Kedeemer." 

The innocence of the Garden was historic, 
but its import in the divine economy has often 
been misunderstood. Its true importance lay 
in the position in which it placed man in re- 



16 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



gard to moral individuality and freedom, and 
in giving the race an ideal of its own toward 
which to work. God would not have man 
holy merely by the method of his creation, nor 
without some experimental knowledge of evil, 
but have him become so in such a way as him- 
self to have a share in the glory of his final 
exaltation, and that God might add to the 
glory of creative power and wisdom, a glory of 
developing grace. 

Whether or no there is a derivative relation 
from the brute creation in man's body, the 
idea of development upward from the animal 
to the spiritual is a notable illustration of what 
God is doing in this world, and of the work to 
which he calls all who have in any degree 
reached the spiritual. The reality of what is 
called the Fall of Man is beyond successful 
question; though modern science should estab- 
lish all its hypotheses it could not disprove it. 
No mattter in this regard how man became 
man, there was a time when he first became 
man, a being with a rational and moral nature. 
There was a time when he approached his first 
moral action. That was a time of moral 
equipoise; and his first choice of the evil in- 
stead of the good, of the lower instead of the 
higher, was his Fall. And with the Fall was 
disclosed the most momentous fact that God 
had placed in his work, the law that like pro- 
duces like for morals as well as for matter. 

But the ideal remained as an ideal and has 



THE VICTORY OF DEATH. 



1? 



ever remained, felt and understood dimly or 
clearly as men have gone on saying, "I know 
the better but follow the worse." This hered- 
ity of moral condition determined the generic 
character of the race, and revealed the de- 
signed character of God's moral administration 
in the world. Here occurred the great fact that 
Paul describes when he says, "For God hath 
shut up all unto disobedience that he might 
have mercy upon all." Komans xi: 32. Holi- 
ness thereafter was to come only through sin 
and grace, as much as though the race had been 
sinful from the beginning. 

Stated abstractly and impersonally, and ac- 
cording to what we see around us in human 
kind every day, God at some time and in some 
way has cast into His animal mass the ferment 
of reason and conscience, and the opposing 
forces have been at work ever since; the ques- 
tion of result being how much of the spiritual 
and eternal can be sublimated and distilled. 

The first sin was a surrender to the animal 
nature by disobedience to God, in regard to it. 
The animal prevailed over the spiritual, and 
the spiritual only remained in capacities and 
the reminding force of conscience. Man has 
remained under the power of the animal taken 
in the large sense, except as redeemed. See 
Paul's doctrine of the flesh in the Epistle to 
Romans. Sin has been the choice of the flesh, 
its self-seeking, its violence, its hates and its 
loves; and the dominion of death has been the 



18 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



necessary result, as expressed by Paul: "If 
ye live after the flesh ye must die." Eomans 
viii: 13. And death has wrought in all de- 
partments of man's nature, preparing the de- 
struction even of being itself. Eedemption 
has been the initiation of a spiritual evolution 
antagonizing death through the incarnation of 
the Word and the fostering power of the 
Divine Spirit. 



LIFE BY GOD REVEALED IN PROMISE. 19 



CHAPTER II. 

LIFE BY GOD REVEALED 1ST PROMISE. 

Eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, prom- 
ised in the beginning of the ages (pro chronon aionion). 
Tit. i: 2. 

The new word was not long in coming. It 
was symbolic, yet clearly indicated a victory 
over the power through which sin and death 
had made their first conquest, and so over sin 
and death themselves. The representative 
source of evil was cursed and doomed to a 
fatal crushing by a power to arise by the wo- 
man. 

We also call the divine sentence upon 
Adam and Eve "a curse, " but words of promise 
abound in it. We call it a sentence of death, 
but words of life were heard even before the 
woman was addressed. In the condemnation 
of the serpent we hear of the seed of the woman. 
Seed is not the work of death but of life. It 
was certain therefore before a word was uttered 
against our first parents that they were to live. 
The curse was to be suspended and the power 
of sin and death limited. Thus began to be 
exhibited the sense in which death had been 
threatened against them. A door of hope was 
opened. Death was not to utterly ruin the 



20 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



whole man, was not even to be the immediate 
death of the body. It was to wound him to 
the depravation of his nature and to the initial 
decay of his body. But the God-inspired life 
was to remain in him, and the work of death 
was for the present to be held back from the 
immaterial personality. The J udge was already 
wearing a face of promise as he approached the 
woman. When the words of God reach her 
.ears she is already suffering the death there is 
in disobedience; as the next degree, God un- 
folds before her a vision of sorrow and subordi- 
nation. But the promise of life was repeated 
to her in the words, "Thou shalt bring forth 
children/' And when Adam names his help- 
meet, he calls her, not Death, but Living, as 
the mother of the living. 

When the condemnation reaches Adam, his 
death appears in toil and sorrow to be followed 
by a return to the ground. But even here 
the sentence says nothing of the spirit. What 
came from the ground was to return to the 
ground. But Adam's inner self did not come 
from the ground, as Augustine* so long ago 
said. The Breath of God could not return to 
the ground. And so the door of life was still 
left open. 

We find then these elements of promise in 
what was first pronounced after the Fall: 
1. Death, as far as revealed objectively, is 



* De Peocatorum mentis et remissione. Cap. 1. 



LIFE BY GOD REVEALED I2ST PROMISE. 21 

made to be the death of the body. There was 
still left the wide door of hope for the soul. 

2. God begins his sentence with the serpent 
as taking part with the woman against evil. 

3. The grace of child-bearing for the life of 
a race. 

4. This child-bearing shall bring in the con- 
quering Seed, the Eenewer of Life for the race. 

5. The last verses of Gen. iii. suggest a re- 
maining potency of immortality. Man was not 
to be allowed to partake of the tree of life and 
live forever because he had come to know good 
and evil, i. e. , evil as well as good. Surely 
there could have been no obstacle to his living 
forever if he were certain to always choose 
the good, but an immortality in evil was not 
to he tolerated. Thus early do we begin to find 
evidence that an eternal dualism of evil with 
good urns not the thought of God. 

Thus man's estate was changed from the 
possibility of a natural development into im- 
mortality, to a condition of trial in conflict 
with existing evil. And the trial was as to 
the saving the soul from the law and operation 
of death, which had fallen upon it in its loss 
of innocence, and upon the body in its sub- 
jection to the law of decay. All this may 
never have been revealed to our first parents 
in Miltonic language, but it appears in the 
self -revelation of God to the first patriarchs 
and their communion with Him. Abel made 
an offering to the Lord and the Lord had re- 



22 



THE TRIUMPH Of LIFE. 



spect to Abel and his offering. To Cain a 
promise of acceptance was made if he did well, 
otherwise Sin was lying at the door to finish 
its fatal work upon him. Seth and his children 
were inspired to initiate the worship of Jeho- 
vah. Enoch walked with God and was made 
an example of life restored by promise and 
communion with God. Xoah found grace in 
the eyes of the Lord, and was made a preacher 
of righteousness and the preserver of the race. 
These glimpses of life with God evince that 
the work of grace had begun, and that it had 
been made known that the personal and real 
life of man should be secure to the worshipful 
and obedient. 

In these gospel days, when so much is said 
of salvation by faith, we are in danger of for- 
getting that men have always been saved by 
faith. Faith is an obedient, confiding response 
to God, revealed in whatever way. There may 
be faith in God revealed in nature, if nature is 
discerned to be the expression of an individual 
being and will. That "the just shall live by 
his faith" was uttered by prophet before it 
was spoken by apostle. That the Patriarchs 
were saved by faith we have the testimony 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "These all 
died in faith," and "without faith it is 
impossible to be well-pleasing unto him." 
Abraham not only was saved by faith, but be- 
came according to the argument of Paul a type 
of believers for all time: "Who is the father 



LIFE BY GOD REVEALED IK PROMISE. 23 

of us all;" "Nor was it reckoned for his sake 
alone . . . but for our sake also unto whom it 
shall be reckoned who believe on him that 
raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" Note 
that gospel faith is here spoken of, not as 
in Christ, but as in Him that raised Jesus 
from the dead. The identity of Christian faith 
and Abrahamic is thus demonstrated by carry- 
ing back our faith to Abraham's standpoint. 
God became to the patriarchs a revealed God. 
Then began men to call on the name of the 
Lord (Jehovah). All willing response to his 
word was accepted, i. e., "saving faith." The 
difference between their faith and ours and 
the difference in God's manner of accepting it, 
was what in human relations we should call a 
difference of administration. As in Hebrews 
again, "and these all having had witness borne 
to them through their faith received not the 
promise, God having provided some letter thing 
concerning us, that apart from us they should 
not be made perfect." 

In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul reasons 
that the Christian dispensation was brought 
in so that "the blessing of Abraham might 
come upon the Gentiles by Christ Jesus." 

In the conversation of Christ with the Jews 
recorded in the eighth of John, he made two 
far reaching declarations respecting the rela- 
tion between Abraham and himself. First: 
"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my 
day." We must understand more to be meant 



24 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



by this joy than mere personal pleasure in 
being permitted to have a vision of the future. 
He must have rejoiced in view of the fulfillment 
of the promise, "In thee shall all the nations 
be blessed;" and according to the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, he must have in- 
cluded himself among those who, "apart from 
us should not be made perfect." 

These last words are the key to the relation 
of primitive to Christian faith. 

The first faith of men was provisional and 
anticipatory, and did not complete its work 
"apart from us." That is, in some way they 
have at last to be consolidated with us in the 
salvation of the race. Their faith was not dif- 
ferent in its potency, but differently related as 
between a promised and a present fulfillment 
of the divine covenant. 

The other utterance of Christ was, "Before 
Abraham was I am." Xow if Christ was be- 
fore Abraham, with reverence be it asked, 
where was he, and what was he doing? John's 
gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews affirm 
that as the Logos he was the Creator of the 
world. If the son of God was the Creator of 
man, are we to suppose for a moment that he 
stood aside from the time that work was com- 
pleted and took no care for him until he came 
to take flesh upon him among men? 

Certainly not. He can not be supposed to 
have made all and upheld all by the word of 
his power and not to have revealed himself to 



LIFE BY GOD REVEALED IK PROMISE. 25 

his intelligent creatures, and the revelation of 
God described in the Old Testament must have 
been by him. If we do not go so far as to 
identify the preexistent Christ in every way 
with the Jehovah of the Old Testament, we 
must at least recognize him in the "voice of 
the Lord God walking in the garden," in the 
appearance of the Lord to Abraham by the o£ks 
of Mamre, to Jacob at Bethel, to Moses in the 
burning bush, and in the "Angel of his Pres- 
ence" of Isaiah. And, indeed, how like the 
voice of Jesus reads Isa. xxxiii: 22: "For Je- 
hovah is our judge. Jehovah is our lawgiver. 
Jehovah is our king; he will save us." That 
is, Jehovah has regal, legislative and judicial 
power over us, and he will save us. In a word, 
he who speaks for God in the Old Testament 
by angel, priest or prophet, he who covenants 
with man in behalf of God, must be held to 
be identical with the Word that in fullness of 
time was made flesh and dwelt among men. 

Hence the proper answer to the question 
that has been raised of late whether man can 
be "saved by the essential Christ, or only by 
knowledge of the historic Christ." The es- 
sential Christ is God revealed to the soul, and 
God thus revealed saves those to whom he re- 
veals himself. At the same time those thus 
saved must also be included among those who 
"apart from us (believers in the historic 
Christ) shall not be made perfect," i. e., in 
some way and some time they shall reach their 



26 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



solidarity with the rest of their race under the 
historic Christ; and here perhaps is the explan- 
ation of Paul's illustration in Gal. iii between 
"seeds" and "seed." Instead of finding fault 
with Paul's linguistic argument as so many 
have done from Luther down, let us say rather 
that he is not making an argument at all, but 
merely intends that the form of the collective 
noun should illustrate this solidarity of all the 
good and all the saved in the Son of man. 

The first promises to the patriarchs were 
therefore part of the preparatory work of Christ, 
the forecasting of the redemption through his 
incarnation, death and resurrection. But for 
these promises they must have expected the 
work of death to go on to the utter negation of 
all that enters into the conception of life. Our 
first parents had no means of knowing what 
death meant-, except by observing the cessation 
of life about them and their own imagination 
of such cessation in themselves. The promise 
of eternal life, therefore, was a promise to stay 
the power of death and to restore from what it 
had already wrought. This promise was ful- 
filled by granting a survival to the spirit and 
permitting it to take on a new body in a death- 
less life; but only to those who embraced the 
new opportunity to regain their lost hold upon 
immortality by a new spiritual union with 
God. Thus the preexistent Christ began by 
promise to rebuild at the foundation of the 
spirit, and thus early "brought life and im- 



LIFE BY GOB REVEALED IK PKOMISE. 27 

mortality to light. " And henceforward death 
itself became a helper unto life by entering, 
along with pain and sickness, into the new trial 
as a teacher of virtue and holiness. And the 
grand result is carried forward and made to 
depend upon the final judgment of soul. The 
final award of death only follows the rejection 
of grace. For such as fail to recover them- 
selves under this new trial of grace, death re- 
sumes its course, and is completed in the second 
death by the extinction of all that God put 
into life when he made man. 



28 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE in. 

IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 

The view of Life and Death offered in the 
preceding chapters challenges the prevalent 
ideas of immortality, as also the usual under- 
standing of many passages of Scripture. It is 
necessary, therefore, before we proceed farther, 
to consider the question of human immortal- 
ity. 

From as far back as we can trace the history 
of opinion, man has held in some form a belief 
in a future life. This faith cannot be said to 
have had the universal and intuitional charac- 
ter of a necessary belief, for it has been widely 
doubted and often denied. But it is a kind of 
primal judgment that springs up in man's first 
thinking, and, even with revelation aside, 
there is no reason to question that it represents 
the truth. But it is a great mistake not to 
distinguish between a future life for the race 
and its immortality. Whether we as Chris- 
tians believe in the latter must depend upon 
our understanding of what Christ has said re- 
garding it. 

The belief in a future life was developed 
in the ancient pagan world, as, e. g. 3 among 
the Greeks, into the doctrine of the inherent 



IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 



29 



immortality of all souls — that souls must live 
always by the very necessity of their being. 
This was a part of the pagan philosophy 
most current in the time of the early Chris- 
tians. From those times it has come down 
to us. We have been taught to think of 
man as immortal, we speak of him as immor- 
tal, most suppose that the Bible calls him im- 
mortal, though it never does, but distinctly 
says that "God only hath immortality. " Few 
devout minds stop to consider whether this 
belief demands any qualification or even exam- 
ination. The antiquity of any belief weighs 
heavily upon the mind. It is well nigh im- 
possible to approach the question of any needed 
modification of a belief supposed to be so well 
settled without a prejudgment against it. Yet 
we know very well that human life can scarcely 
show any truth unmingled with error, that 
error becomes hoary as well as truth, that the 
truth of one opinion has often been taken as 
evidence of the truth of other related opinions 
which were not true. 

In interpreting the revelation made by Jesus 
Christ we encounter a philosophy which origi- 
nated with minds not enlightened by revela- 
tion, and which was but an attempt at a reading 
of nature. This attempt was made by some of 
the greatest minds the world has ever seen, and 
so attained to much truth, so much that it has 
been hastily concluded that Christ himself 
postulates this philosophy in what he has to 



30 



THE TEIUMPH OF LIFE. 



say to men. And thus pagan ideas have prac- 
tically determined how revelation should be un- 
derstood. This method forestals the question 
whether or no Jesus Christ brought any new 
light to mankind on this subject of the contin- 
uance of the future life. But in the presence 
of Christ, in the presence of Him who came 
from God, and himself "made everything that 
was niade," who is Plato? Can we coolly im- 
agine that the author of life, the appointer of 
all its conditions, when he came to speak of 
life, should have no corrections to make, no 
new elements to introduce in the doctrine of 
the brightest of human minds? Plato and 
Socrates themselves had no such pride in their 
work as to doubt this. They hoped for some 
word to be sent from the Deity to make known 
what they were merely seeking after. They 
looked upon "their opinions as but the dawn 
of a day of light which they hoped wo aid yet 
arise upon the world . ' ' This is expressed in the 
Phaedo (78 and 85) where Socrates bids his 
hearers to search through all Hellas and all the 
races of the barbarians for some one to take his 
place, as one to charm away the fear of death 
by a true philosophy; and if they are unable 
to live hy the aid of a divine word (logos), then 
to take the best of human words. When that 
Divine Word came, philosophy should have 
been silent and waited for his voice to be clearly 
heard. 

Yet we are by no means aiming to bring into 



IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 



31 



contempt the achievements of ancient philos- 
ophy regarding man's spiritual life. It spake 
the noblest, truest words that minds could 
speak unaided by revelation. Indeed it is not 
necessary to believe that they had no divine 
aid. 

In the generic, in the ideal, they reached 
the truth, Man is immortal. Immortality is 
man's normal and perfect destiny. Everything 
is properly characterized by what it is at its best. 
The fruit of a tree is described from its per- 
fected specimens. No one stops to qualify this 
by reference to its windfalls. It is not neces- 
sary in common speech or thought to take 
aught from our crown of glory because of those 
who become abortive and are lost to the world 
and themselves. 

There is good reason, however, for denying 
the truth of that philosophic dictum which 
makes man universally and necessarily immor- 
tal. And in view of the light that Jesus Christ 
was able to shed on all matters of the future 
life, it was to be expected, as I have said, that 
he would correct as well as add to the best of 
human opinions. 

A comparison of Hebrew opinion with that 
of other nations of their time gives additional 
occasion to doubt that the pagan peoples had 
arrived at the whole truth in this matter. How 
happened it that God's chosen people had less 
light, if genuine and sufficient light it was, on 
this subject than other peoples? It was the 



32 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



nations who were "allowed to walk in their 
own ways" that developed this doctrine of in- 
herent immortality. ~No one claims that the 
Hebrew scriptures contain any such teaching; 
yet they have their doctrine of "eternal life" 
according to Christ's own testimony. 

This dogma of essential immortality was not 
wanting to the Hebrews because they had no 
opportunity of accepting it from other peoples. 
In fact the difficulty is to account for its con- 
spicuous absence in connection with their resi- 
dence in Egypt,* and Moses' Egyptian learn- 
ing. For this belief existed even more strongly 
among the Egyptians than the Greeks. It was 
at times the habit of the former to avoid the 
mention of death by the euphemism of "the sec- 
ond life." But when the Hebrews went out of 
Egypt we find their prophetic leader setting 
before them as their new national creed, not 

* And yet the Egyptians also held to the extinction of 
the soul as the punishment of some of the wicked. 
Thus in their Book of Hades, Horus says: . . . Wicked 
ones, Ra will sacrifice you, you shall no longer be in 
existence, your souls shall be destroyed; they shall live 
no longer on account of what you have done against 
my father Osiris . . . Oh be no longer in existence, be 
destroyed. 

My Kheti, great fire! . . . open thy mouth, draw 
wide thy jaws, launch thy flame against the enemies of 
my father, burn their bodies, consume their souls, by 
I his tire from thy mouth, by this flame which is in thy 
holly . . . they exist no longer. 

Birch's Records of the Past, Vol. x., sec. 8, C. 



IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 



33 



a doctrine of life alone, but of "life arid 
death." 

With the philosophic systems of the sur- 
rounding nations affirming a future life for all, 
I say the thing to be accounted for is that the 
Hebrews we^e held to a restricted, and, from 
the point of view of their neighbors, a yery 
imperfect belief. This is so marked that the 
late Dean Stanley even claimed that they had 
no knowledge of the immortality of the soul 
until they received it from the Greeks! How 
the Dean got along with the connection of the 
Israelites with the Egyptians and other nations 
besides the Greeks which had their doctrine 
of immortality, it is not easy to imagine. 

If essential immortality was the true doctrine 
upon which the Son of God would base his 
revelations regarding the future of the race, 
why were not the people chosen and taught of 
God led up to this view at least as fully as the 
nations not chosen and taught of God? Shall 
we take refuge in "don't know/' and never 
suspect that, there existed a reason in the truth 
itself, in the fact that God's thoughts in this 
matter were not exactly as man's thoughts? 
We know in general that the Old Testament 
revelation was designed to lead the way to 
Christ and his doctrine. But instead of care- 
fully comparing the teaching of Christ respect- 
ing eternal life with what had here preceded 
it, the Christian church has sought to develop 
it on the basis of the Greek philosophy. Plato 



34 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



has dominated Christian sentiment in respect 
to the future life,, regarded as continued exist- 
ence, and to Christ men have looked only for 
knowledge of its joys and pains. But can any 
good reason be given why Christ should be in- 
terpreted according to Plato on this question 
of necessary life in the future? 

Scholars admit .that his arguments for im- 
mortality are fanciful and insufficient, that they 
do not constitute a proof ; nor have men since 
been able to add to them, so that in our own 
times we have reached any sufficient ground of 
belief, demonstrative or intuitional, that man 
has been made in himself immortal. We do 
little more than repeat the old arguments and 
emphasize the supposed law of divine harmony 
in our being. Perhaps no argument produced 
in the Christian ages commends itself with 
more force than that of Origen, viz., that what- 
ever is made in the image and shares in the 
nature of the Eternal God must be eternal. 
But all such reasoning must be subject to what 
Christ has revealed. I have already intimated 
that the general belief in the future life of the 
race is of immense significance and value. If 
there is any harmony in the constitution of our 
being it must represent some fact. This sense 
of life within us, often strongest when the body 
is weak and decaying, approaches a conscious- 
ness that we are not going to die with the body, 
and is really the great natural evidence of a 
future for us. This it is which gives power to 



IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 



35 



all arguments for immortality. But few will 
have the boldness to claim that this conviction 
demands the belief that this future existence 
is beyond conditions and withdrawal. This 
step is a non-sequitur that needs only to be 
pointed out to be admitted. 

Let us say rather that the intuitive expecta- 
tion of a life to come marks potentiality and 
capacity, and makes a basis for hope and faith. 
It prepares men to receive a promise of life, 
opens the way for aspiration, self-direction and 
spiritual duty. It prepares them, in the words 
of Paul, to^ "seek for glory, honor and immor- 
tality " This I claim exhausts the content of 
our sense of life independent of the body, and 
all the natural, so called, proofs of immortality. 
The necessity of immortality, the idea that man 
has been so made that he cannot cease to be, 
cannot be proved. It is a baseless assumption. 
To prove it would require to prove man so far 
forth to be an unconditioned being — himself 
the absolute — placed on an equality with Deity 
as far as a hold upon life is concerned. But 
as the absolute cannot be shown at all to be- 
long to man in his present state, there is noth- 
ing on which to base it for the future. 

Let us try to imagine ourselves resolved to 
go forward into the future and live independ- 
ent of conditions that may exist there. He 
must be a bold man who will claim that he 
now holds the patent of the future in bis hand 
so firmly that even God may not deprive him of 



36 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



it. We know nothing of life in this world 
except under divinely appointed conditions, 
and real contingency of continuance. Is it to 
be supposed that God has not appointed con- 
ditions and contingency for the future? — that 
we pass in this matter of continued life from 
the contingent to the necessary when we leave 
the body? I ask is it philosophical so to sup- 
pose? If not, what if the conditions there 
should be found to include for some the de- 
struction of "both soul and body in hell? 7 ' 
What if he that gives the spirit-body should 
make it subject to the second death, as the 
natural body is to its death? 

But it will be denied that the doctrine of 
Christ has been warped in the interpretation 
by the philosophy that preceded him. 

It is admitted that the Xew Testament does 
not reveal in terms an immortality for all, but 
it has often been confidently affirmed that it 
reveals it indirectly by revealing an eternity of 
bliss or of a pain for all. This of course begs 
the question I discuss regarding punishment, 
whether it is to be eternal pain or eternal loss 
of being. One class of reasoners affirm that 
the death of the ejouI cannot be loss of being 
because man is immortal in his essence; an- 
other class, that man is proved to be immortal 
by the revelation of an eternity of blessedness 
for the righteous and of pain for the wicked. 

The logical circle that is made by the two is 
plain enough. 



IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE ? 



37 



What is necessary in order to arrive at the 
truth is to listen to Christ without any philos- 
ophical prejudice that will prevent our receiv- 
ing new truth from him if it is in his words. 
Let us recall again the divine preeminence of 
Christ, the light which he as the True Light 
has shed upon us. Indeed what would be our 
confidence to-day of a future life at all, if he 
had not come into the world. Eemember the 
gropings of such a mind as Cicero's. Is there 
not the very highest probability that he who 
only has "brought life and immortality to 
light," has done it with features that had es- 
caped the ignorance of man? Shall we believe 
that the Great Teacher had reserved nothing 
for his revelation more fundamental than a 
doctrine of happiness and pain based upon 
the Greek philosophy of existence? 



38 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

U LIFE" AND "DEATH" IK THE OLD TESTA- 
MENT, 

As I have already intimated, the meaning 
of these terms in the Bible has commonly been 
understood according to preconceived ideas of 
immortality. It has been understood that God 
had endowed man with inherent life in his 
soul, and that everything said of his death be- 
yond that of the body, must be taken in some 
accommodated or figurative sense. Without 
this foundation the conception of a death of 
living horrors for eternity would probably 
never have found its way into the teachings of 
Christianity. 

Leaving then purely human ideas aside, let 
us try to determine the true sense of the Scrip- 
ture and see to what philosophy it points. 

"Life" is used, in the Bible as elsewhere, 
first for the principle of sensitive and conscious 
being in which our peculiar existence as man 
originates, and upon which its continuance 
depends. It is thus used of the body and of 
the incorporeal nature and of the united na- 
ture, the composite man. Then as life is the 
source and condition of all enjoyment and ac- 
tivity, the ascent is open to the secondary and 



"life" akd "death/' 



39 



figurative uses of the word. In this way it is 
used for the conditions of the most desirable 
life,, for the life of the noblest part of man, for 
the ideally happy and highest developed life, 
and for self-sustaining and eternal life. We 
thus reach a climax of life in our conceptions 
of human existence and well-being. We need 
not dwell upon this, there never would have 
been any dispute about it, had it not been for 
the disagreement regarding the meaning of 
fe 'death." The usage of the two can best be 
determined by looking at them together. For 
the word "life" is the key to the word 
"death." As we have seen already, when 
"die" was first uttered to human ears it could 
only be understood by "life," as its loss. And 
"death" from that day to this has never had 
any meaning which was not the negation or 
the opposite of some meaning of "life." Over 
against the climax of life there is an anti- 
climax of death.. Beginning at the top, the 
highest figurative sense of life as the highest 
blessedness, we descend by this anti-climax to 
the negation of that which gave man conscious 
being. Beyond that death has no signifi- 
cance. 

The traditional error has been to ignore the 
possibility of this last negation, and to arrange 
a climax of death parallel with that of life, 
running it on into an infinity of death in the 
sense of ill-being. The Bible, as I conceive, 
cuts off all this at a stroke by applying 



40 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



"death" in a sharp antagonism to "life," and 
from denying by it, first, the ideal living, then 
descending to the denial of all living. The 
words for life and death have this comprehen- 
siveness both in the Hebrew and Greek. But 
from the feebler light cast upon the future 
state in the Old Testament little is gained by 
attempting to argue at length from its lan- 
guage as to the final penalty of the sinner. It 
is necessary to be content with observing in 
what direction its language points and how it 
best harmonizes with what follows in the New 
Testament. 

The Israelites were not taught, certainly, that 
God's disciplinary dealing with man ceased at 
death, and that death was the time of the final 
separation of the good and the evil. Their 
heaven was to be "gathered to their fathers," 
to "their people." 

Too little seems to have been made of this 
in judging of their views of the future life, 
and too much of what is said of "Sheol." 
"Sheol" is rarely used in the historical books 
of the Old Testament, and is nowhere used of 
any prosaic account of ordinary death. It is 
used by poets and prophets to emphasize the sad 
or calamitous side of death, as opposed to the 
enjoyments and prosperity of life. 

Their allusions to death, as going to Sheol 
no more excluded other and happier beliefs of 
the future state, than does our familiar phrase 
"going down to the grave" exclude or interfere 



"life" and "death." 41 

with our faith in heaven. Indeed the future 
life of the Old Testament is related to the re- 
surrection life of the New Testament as generic 
to specific. The Jew ivas taught that he went 
to a life with his ancestors. Christ gave the 
world a revelation in part of the details by 
'which the change of worlds is wrought. 

The opposite of being gathered in peace to 
the fathers- was for a soul to be "cut off from 
his people." This more nearly corresponds to 
the sending to Gehenna in the New Testament 
than anything else in the Old Testament. 
Sins of ignorance might be forgiven, atoned 
for, but for "presumptuous" sins the soul was 
to be utterly cut off from his people with his 
iniquity upon him. Num. xv: 30,31. Much 
has been said of the absence in the Old Testa- 
ment of rewards and punishments in the 
future as incentives to right action in this 
life. 

But why should God say much about the 
future when dealing directly with men in the 
present ? Blessings upon obedience in the pres- 
ent implied the same for the future with an un- 
changeable God, and so of the opposite. But 
heaven was sufficiently revealed to them as the 
great assembly of the soul-land where God's - 
chosen people were God's chosen people still. 
How could it have been pictured to them in 
any very different manner ? There was no risen 
Christ to be the central attraction in a Chris- 
tian paradise; God in his spiritual essence has 



42 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



never been held up to man in way of social 
familiarity. 

The heaven of the Jew could only be to be 
gathered with the God-fearing Jews who had 
gone before. Indeed to this day it is not un- 
common to hear Christians speak, as of one of 
the most joyous anticipations of heaven, of be- 
ing admitted to the society of "good old Abra- 
ham." We need not doubt that the God-fear- 
ing in Israel looked to the future with quite as 
much content as do we ourselves. 

Let not the poetic conception of Sheol mis- 
lead us in this regard. For as to their enjoy- 
ments in the future state, if Abraham in this 
life saw Christ's day and rejoiced, much more 
must he, and all his true children, have been 
able in the light of the spirit world to see the 
Christ and the coming glory of his kingdom, 
and seeing, have been filled with abundant joy. 
We must remember also that they who have 
passed beyond the estimate of duration by the 
succession of day and night, substitute a sense 
of eternity for the sense of time, and may 
know nothing of what seems to us a distance 
of the future and a long waiting. 

On this back ground Genesis and the Penta- 
teuchal law set forth a doctrine of Life and 
Death; and in the very first gift of life it is seen 
to belong to more than the bodily organism. 

As the result of the divine inbreathing, man 
became a "living soul," more than a living 
being, a living person with a soul (nephesh). 



"life" and "death." 



43 



Life is here attributed to the soul with the 
same unfigurative meaning with which it is 
applied to the body. This gift of life is fol- 
lowed by a threatening of death to ensue upon 
sin. 

We are logically required to understand this 
death as the loss of this "living" of the soul, 
unless proof can be adduced to the contrary. 
I have already expressed the belief that the 
change that occurred upon sin is called death, 
or loss of living, as being the beginning of all 
death, as containing its fatal germs and setting 
in operation its first working. 

Let us imagine Grod proceeding in the next 
world to execute the full death penalty upon 
Cain, e. g., as having forfeited all right longer 
to enjoy the gift of conscious life received 
through Adam and Eve; suppose that Cain, 
having secured no interest in the Kedeemer, 
which we hope however will be found not to 
have been true of him, should plead that the 
death of the body and his remorse had ex- 
hausted the meaning of the sentence, and so 
beg for a continuance of his wretched life. 
Would any answer be needed other than: "By 
sin you forfeited all that I gave you as 
life. There is nothing to stay the power 
of death working through to the end of all 
life!" 

The doctrine of the law is best summarized 
in Deut. xxx: 15, 19, in setting before the peo- 
ple good and life and evil and death. "I have 



44 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



set before you life and death, blessing and 
cursing, therefore choose life." 

IS T o details of what death is, are supposed to 
be necessary in order to lead to this choice. 
But to imagine that life here merely means 
long life, and death only early or calamitous 
death, is to shut one's eyes to the spiritual 
force of the Deuteronomic law. 

The remaining Old Testament writings 
abound in the use of "life" for the higher 
moral life, and spiritual enjoyment. "Thou 
wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence 
is fullness of joy." Ps. xvi: 11. "In his favor 
is life." Ps. xxx: 5. "So shall they be life 
unto thy soul." Prov. iii: 22. "The fear of 
the Lord is the fountain of life." Prov. xiv: 27. 

The appropriateness of such language rests 
upon the basal idea of life as conscious exist- 
ence, and carries that idea along with what is 
built upon it, e. g., the fear of the Lord is not 
a fountain of life to any being which does not 
possess life in his constitution, so as to be able 
to exercise that fear. In other words continu- 
ance of living existence is the axial idea about 
which all other conceptions of life are gathered. 
When life is used of eternal life the idea of 
continued existence is not dropped out of it 
because of the infinitude with which it is over- 
laid. 

So of "death;" its use for the loss of all that 
is good in life does not exclude its use for the 
loss also of continued personal existence. 



\ W. " 

"LIFE" A^D "DEATH." 45 

The most instructiye passage regarding this 
matter in the prophetic Scriptures is Eze. xviii: 
and we can imagine to ourselves what impres- 
sions a serious minded Israelite would derive 
from it. Here are depicted quite fully lives of 
holiness and of sin, and the rewards of the one 
and the penalties of the other are all compre- 
hended in "live" and "die." 

And not to dispute whether soul (nephesh) 
is here used independently of the body, there 
is no doubt as to the emphasis placed upon 
the inner personality of the man, in the solemn 
way in which it is arranged in the presence of 
God. "Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul 
of the father, so also the soul of the Son is 
mine, the soul that sinneth it shall die." 
Suppose a hearer of that ancient day should 
have thoughtfully asked himself, "What is it 
that as a sinner I am in danger of in this 
death? I know what life is; it is to go on 
and on with this inner self which I now am, 
and when this going on is promised as the 
greatest blessing Jehovah can bestow as a re- 
ward for obedience, I know it means the high- 
est possible well-being and happiness. But 
what is this 'death' ? 

"Of course it means the loss of the blessing 
there is in the happiness of life, but is this all? 
Life was a beginning, is not death an end?" 

And there he was left to stand in the dark 
shadow of an all-embracing, fathomless nega- 
tion, Death. 



46 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE V. 
"life" asd "death" m the epistles of 

THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

When we come to the New Testament we 
naturally find a more varied use of both terms, 
"life" and "death." The revelation of spir- 
itual truth and future life by our Lord, and 
the higher fields of thought traversed by the 
"New Testament writers carry these words into 
a wider range of ideas and speech. For 
"life" two words are used within the scope 
of this discussion, of similar physical origin in 
their probable etymologies, but taking some- 
what different directions. "Psuchee" is life as 
closely connected with spiritual personality. 
" Zoee " is life as associated with the conscious 
activities and enjoyment of a living being. 
But the chief difference in the New Testa- 
ment usage of "life" which requires notice is 
its use for the state into which man is lifted 
by the power of the Holy Spirit. This re- 
newed condition is called life par excellence. 
as being the highest development of life in its 
highest features. It is the ideal life in which 
communion with God is restored^ and the 
power of reunion with God for the whole be- 
ing of man begins to be exemplified. And 



"life" axd ''death." 47 

the absence of this condition with its holy 
activities is by comparison called " death/' 
and in the same sense in which its presence is 
called "life." 

The want of this life is a part of the work 
of sin, and the man is "dead in trespasses and 
sins." But here again we shall find that it 
does not follow that this is the whole of death 
which "sin when it is full-grown bringeth 
forth," Jas. i: 15. The sinner who is going 
on in his disobedience comes more and more 
under the power of death; one feature after 
another of the God-given life disappears. He 
is under the law of sin and death, and, if he 
persists, this divinely fixed law will do its full 
work upon him. It is not necessary before 
we can believe this that we should know pre- 
cisely how this law works. The giver of life 
only knows how it can be withdrawn in its de- 
partments beyond human observation, whether 
by some process of natural operation or by 
more direct infliction. 

In order to proceed step by step from the 
generic to the more specific, I shall first exam- 
ine in the New Testament the epistles, and 
then in a. subsequent chapter the words of our 
Lord, adding a consideration of some passages 
in the Eevelation. 

I shall also look at the meaning of "de- 
stroy" and "destruction," as illustrating the 
meaning of "death." 

Paul uses "death" in a variety of contrast 



48 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



to his use of "life;' ? e. g.. for the occasion of 
death; Bom. vii: 13: '''Did then that which is 
good become death unto me;" and for moral 
degradation as leading to death: "For the mind 
of the flesh is death/' viii: 6. 

But he employs it distinctly for the divine 
penalty upon the sinner in such passages as 
Bom. i: 32: "Knowing the ordinance of &od 
that they which practice such tilings are 
worthy of death." Here is that breadth and 
emphasis of which we have already spoken. 
None of the partial or secondary senses in 
which Paul uses it can be substituted here. 
If anyone claims Eom. viii: 6 given above, as a 
definition of death, let him combine the two 
verses and read: They that practice such 
things are worthy of the mind of the flesh: or 
are worthy of moral degradation with its inev- 
itable pains. Moral degradation they already 
have; what the penalty is we rind in viii: 13: 
"For if ye live after the flesh ye must die;" 
not if ye live after the flesh ye must be sinful 
and remorseful forever. Sinful they were 
already, and remorse has not the logical rela- 
tion to the nature of flesh which Paul is 
bringing out here. Flesh dies, we know what 
that is, and he emphasizes the connection of 
death with flesh to call up the like fate of 
those who identify themselves with the flesh. 
Their whole being shall go as flesh goes. It 
will be objected: By flesh Paul does not 
mean the animal nature alone, but the dis- 



"LIFE" AjSTD "death." 



49 



obedient heart. But as he includes all under 
the figure of the flesh, he makes the dissolution 
of the flesh to figure the fate of the heart left 
to its bondage. Nothing can be found in the 
language of Paul to indicate any limit to his 
idea of "death" when thus used, anything 
which holds it back from the destruction of the 
soul's being.* He employs it in the same 
sense in Eom. vi: 21: "For the end of those 
things is death;" vi: 23: "For the wages 
of sin is death;" and vii: 5: "Sinful 
passions . . . wrought in our members to 
bring forth fruit unto death;" not unto 
remorse, for to the Corinthians he says (IT. 
vii: 10): "The sorrow of the world," i. e., 
remorse, "worketh death" not is death, but 
goes on to work out a real death. Paul 
means to put into the word death here all that 
it can convey to express the final judgment 
of God against sinners. If the annulling of 
everything there, is to life is conceivable, 
PauPs words certainly suggest it in these pas- 
sages. 

In that notable passage, I. Cor. xv: 20-28, 
Paul declares Christ to be the abolisher of 

* One cannot refrain from quoting the words of 
Augustine, though he would have protested against the 
sense in which I use them: 

What else does this mean but this: If ye live the 
way of death ye shall wholly die; but if by living the 
way of life ye mortify and slay death, ye shall whol- 
ly live ? — De peccatorum meritis et remissione. 
B. 12 1. cap. 1. 



50 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



death. Of the grand solidarity of glorious 
life of which he gives us here a glimpse as the 
completed redemption of our race,, I shall 
speak farther on. I only wish to say here 
that "the end" in v: 24, must be something- 
more than merely the resurrection of the un- 
just, as Meyer would make it. That the 
apostle should so exult simply over the resur- 
rection of the wicked and their condemnation 
to an eternal conscious death, as a grand con- 
summation in the abolition of death, is quite 
incredible. 

This is so, whether we understand or not, 
that this "end" is preceded by redemptive 
agencies after the "coming" of Christ and the 
resurrection of "them that are Christ's." 

In some way, Paul means, death in its 
farthest reach is annulled. There are two 
ways conceivable — one, that every soul of the 
race be restored to righteousness as well as 
every body raised; the other, that death be 
allowed no new victims, and no longer any 
"rule, authority or power." The former I 
cannot find as the doctrine of Paul, nor of 
any part of the New Testament. The latter 
is a part of that triumph of life to which the 
apostle points us. For in this "end" he shall 
have abolished all rule, even the rule of death. 
Death is among the all tilings subjected. 
The pointing of the text of Westcott and Hort 
between verses 26 and 27, which brings this out 
so clearly, will probably be assented to by all. 



"life" and "death." 51 



But according to the common view even the 
"sting of death/' sin, is to remain and rule 
forever. 

Death for the soul is the great enemy, the 
great "power " of the devil that Christ- came 
to destroy. And when "all tilings are put in 
subjection under his feet," there can be no 
death regnant over the souls of men. It will 
before then have finished its work upon the 
guilty and been forever debarred from the 
righteous. 

But it will be objected that in II. Tim. i: 10, 
Christ is said to have abolished death simply by 
the gospel and in bringing life and incorrup- 
tion to light. True, but Paul is not speaking 
exhaustively here, as he visibly is in the passage 
I have been looking at. It was a great undo- 
ing of death to offer men an escape from it by 
faith in Christ. But that was not the com- 
pleted work Paul was speaking of to the Cor- 
inthians. 

But it may be said: Paul uses "indignation 
and wrath, tribulation and anguish" as equiv- 
alent to death and explanatory of it. Yet 
this is so plain an instance of using the at- 
tendant circumstances, the means or method 
of reaching the end, in the place of the end 
itself, that it would seem attention only needs 
to be recalled to it to prevent mistake. Cer- 
tainly the death of the wicked will be compassed 
through the displeasure of God, and will be a 
doom of tribulation and anguish. 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



But Paul does use certain other words as 
essentially equivalent to "die" and "death," 
viz., "perish," "destroy" and "destruction," 
three words of the same root in the Greek, a 
verb and two nouns. In determining the 
meaning of these words, the real question is 
of their reach and emphasis. Or it may be 
said to lie between the generic and specific. 
They are used both of this life and of the 
future. They are used of physical death or 
dispersion, of moral ruin, and of the infliction 
of the final penalty upon the sinner. 

If the apostle means to employ them in the 
widest, loosest sense possible, then they mean 
merely the loss of all normal conditions and 
faculties. But they are adapted to convey a 
much more specific and intensive sense. And 
if any would hold them back from such sense 
the burden of proof is with them. I believe 
that Paul and the authors of the other epistles 
have an idea more definite and of narrower 
extent which they wish to express. 

And if we seek this more specific and pos- 
itive idea, we certainly cannot find it in eternal 
conscious pain, for the writers of the epistles 
nowhere else give intimation that they ever 
entertained this conception; and "destroy" 
and "destruction" are not adapted to con- 
vey specifically this notion. But they are 
adapted to convey the idea of the utter 
loss or extinguishment of being. And when 
you emphasize them and press them to 



''life" and "death." 53 

their full import, they of necessity yield this 
sense. 

And Christ himself leads the way to this 
emphasis and special force when he bids us 
fear Him who is able to "destroy" both soul 
and body in hell. The destruction of body 
we understand, and he requires us to apply an 
analogous idea to the soul as its destruction. 

And the association by the writers of the 
epistles, of "destruction" with "death" as the 
future penalty points also to this special sense. 
Paul says impenitent sinners are worthy of 
death, and are doomed to destruction. These 
words, under the physical images familiar to 
every mind, point together to an utter end, 
brought about through processes we know not 
how painful or how prolonged, except that it 
shall be relatively by few or many stripes ac- 
cording to the ill deserts of the individual. 
"Destruction" is used of an infliction as pun- 
ishment at a definite time, in II. Thess. i: 9: 
"Who shall suffer punishment; even eternal 
destruction from the face of the Lord and from 
the glory of his might tvhen he shall come," 
etc. These words certainly convey some 
other idea than that of banishment and fixity 
in sin and remorse. In Rom. ix: 22 Paul 
speaks of a class as fitted for destruction; but 
if destruction in the future is substantially 
the same as takes place morally here, these 
persons were already destroyed instead of 
merely getting ready for their ultimate doom. 



54 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



In Phil, iii: 19 he says that the end of the 
enemies of the Cross is perdition, i. e., destruc- 
tion, apoleia; and shall we make of this 
"end" a beginning, and a beginning of an 
eternal state of spiritual wretchedness? On 
the contrary, the very next sentence is evi- 
dence that his thought is the same as when 
he says, "if ye live after the flesh ye must 
die:" "Whose end is perdition, whose God 
is their belly," if they worship the belly they 
must be destroyed as the belly is. 

In Gal. vi: 8 Paul puts the same thought 
in still another form: "For lie that soweth 
unto his own flesh, shall of the flesh reap cor- 
ruption." . And the Greek for corruption here 
is from the root from which "incorruptibility" 
is formed, which is the only human immor- 
tality known to the ISTew Testament. 

Those who reap corruption, therefore, reap 
the opposite of immortality. This same 
thought and peculiarity of language is brought 
out still more emphatically in II. Pet. ii: 12: 
"But these as creatures without reason, born 
mere animals to be taken and destroyed, shall 
in their destroying surely be destroyed." 

One of the clearest instances of the use of 
"perish" in the complete objective sense is in 
I. Cor. xv : 18: "Then they also which 
have fallen asleep in Christ have perished." 
Of course it is easy to say carelessly that Paul 
meant that if Christ did not rise men have no 
Saviour, and as the living are left in sin so the 



"LIFE" AISTD "DEATH." 



55 



dead are suffering the penalty of the divine 
law. But when one looks more carefully he 
sees that this cannot have been his idea. 
Paul was speaking of those who were "in 
Christ/' who had died in faith. He cannot 
have imagined that such had fallen into moral 
ruin and become the victims of their own re- 
morse and of God's judgment. Neither 
could he mean that they are in Gehenna, as 
Meyer would have it, for pious hearts take 
their heaven with them, and the New Testa- 
ment nowhere represents men as sent to Ge- 
henna at, death, only after the judgment. 
And who was to execute any judgment if 
Christ was dead, as Festus affirmed? For 
Christ himself had declared that all judgment 
had been committed to the Son. And if you 
fall back upon thfe Old Testament sentence 
upon sinners, that certainly was simply 
death. 

Paul as a Christian had uo belief in a fu- 
ture state that was not based upon the resur- 
rection of Christ, and he could not imagine a 
future doom of misery for his departed breth- 
ren and sisters. If one says that Paul, by the 
words: "ye are yet in your sins," leaves the 
living in misery and so why not the dead, I 
reply: The misery of sin is an objective fact 
whether there be a God or no, but the misery 
of sin here is no evidence of a future life, but 
rather, taken by itself, that our life is decaying 
and self -destructive, and to perish is certainly 



50 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the most natural outcome of sin with no re- 
demptive agency to withstand it. 

~No, Paul knows no future for believers but 
being "clothed upon" with that life of which 
the resurrection of Christ was the pledge; 
even as Christ said: "Because I live ye shall 
live also." If therefore we would give any 
specific sense to Paul's language we must un- 
derstand him, that if the resurrection is given 
up then literally everything future goes with 
it, and "perish" means utter blotting out, 
ceasing to be. Thus "destruction" as well as 
"death" when used by Paul in its fullest 
sense covers the sphere of conscious being. 

James and John also speak of death as a 
final event distinguished from an abnormal life: 
"And sin when it is full-grown bringeth forth 
death," Jas. i: 15. "He which converteth a 
sinner from the error of his ways shall save a 
soul from death." His use of psucliee here is 
most suggestive. He is not content to say: 
He that converteth a sinner shall save him 
from death, but he that converteth a sinner 
shall s&ve psuchee, a life, from death. 

John shows strikingly the two senses of 
death. In iii : 14 he says, "We know that 
we have pasesd out of death into life because 
we love the brethren. He that loveth not 
abicleth in death." Here the unnatural state 
of sin is termed death, and is fitly so termed 
here and elsewhere for what it is in itself, and 
because it leads to the completed death. But 



"life" and "death." 



57 



in I. v: 16-17 sin is no longer spoken of as 
death, but as bringing to death as a result: 
"There is a sin unto death . . . and there is 
a sin not unto death." To conceive of death 
here as but confirmed and remorseful sin is 
certainly most unwarranted. 

In short, we conclude that although the 
authors of the epistles show the influence of 
the manner of the Old Testament in speaking 
of the fate of the wicked, and maintain some- 
thing of reserve in respect to their future, yet 
their use of "death" and "destruction" is 
best understood as reaching to the extinction 
of personality. This conclusion we shall find 
to be more than confirmed by the words and 
symbolism employed by our Lord, in the gos- 
pels and the Eevelation. 



58 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

"LIFE" AND "DEATH" IK THE GOSPELS AND 
REVELATION. 

Listening to "Life" at the mouth of Christ, 
is as when awakened by the dawn one stands 
and gazes upon the summer sunrise. There 
was light before, but now there is light upon 
light, a glorious shining that covers and fills 
all things. For "in Him was Life and the 
Life was the Light of men." The richness of 
the conception of life in the gospels, especially 
that of John, beggars description by unin- 
spired pens and seems to deprecate analysis as 
rude dissection. "Life" is seized upon to con- 
vey to us an idea of that consummation of our 
being which shall include every blessedness 
that God can bestow, and the assurance that 
such blessedness shall never fail. Life here as 
the natural beginning and condition of all life, 
and as the door to all we know of happiness 
now, is made the sign by which to open to our 
knowledge all possible bliss in life with God in 
the future. 

Practically the meaning of "life" from the 
lips of Jesus Christ is plain to all. It conveys 
all possible fullness both of literal and meta- 



"life" and "death." 



59 



phorical sense. Yet when in theoretical dis- 
cussion it is asked what does Christ mean by 
"eternal life," some answer that life here does 
not signify continued existence, but blessed- 
ness. This is to say that the whole does not 
contain all its parts, that the qualities and ac- 
tivities of being nullify being itself, or at least 
that the idea of being is ignored in magnify- 
ing the blossoming and fruitage of that being 
under the bright shining of the sun of right- 
eousness upon it. 

Dip a skeleton crown in a crystalizing fluid, 
you withdraw it a sparkling thing of beauty, 
call it a crown of life. Will you say it does 
not include the framework upon which the 
crystals have gathered. So does eternal life in- 
clude continued existence, always postulates it, 
no promise of life can have any meaning with- 
out it. The emphasis which belongs to the fu- 
ture as the real life causes a passing over of the 
present and a speaking of the future as if it 
were something different. And indeed it is 
different in that which is added to the present, 
as the crown of crystals is very different from 
the frame of wire or thread. Thus Christ 
says: "It is better for thee to enter into life 
with one eye," etc., but this style of speaking 
does not break the connection between this life 
and its on-going as continued existence. So 
again when he says: " And this is eternal life, 
that they should know Thee the only true God 
and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus 



60 



THE TKIUMPH OP LIFE. 



Christ/ J lie does not cut out the blessing of 
continued existence from the grand whole of 
blessed Being in the future. There would 
have been no discussion of this point, as I have 
said before, had it not been for the hesitation 
to apply a consistent interpretation to the an- 
tithetical term "death." But as the whole of 
life must include all its parts, so the parts of 
death, to reverse the figure, cannot exclude the 
. whole, unless it proved that as a whole it can- 
not take place. In other words, the meta- 
phorical use of "death" as applied to the 
soul cannot be cited as evidence that it is not 
also applied to it literally in other cases, unless 
it is proved that it is impossible to associate 
death literally with the soul. That it is not 
impossible we have endeavored to show in 
what has preceded, and shall offer more evi- 
dence as we go on. 

But Christ says little about death, so little 
that one is reminded of his words: "Tor I 
came not to judge the world but to save the 
world." Only twice does he use the word 
when not speaking of the body. Jn. v: 12. 
"He that heareth my word and believeth him 
that sent me . . . hath passed out of death into 
life." Jn. viii: 51. "If a man keeps my 
word he shall never see death." 

In the first passage all admit that "death" 
means more than liability to the death of the 
body or liability to loss of being. It pictures 
first the moral state of which death in every 



"life" and "death." 



61 



form is the resulting penalty. It includes a 
condition of degradation, condemnation and 
liability to penalty, from all of which there is 
an escape by union to Christ. But it does not 
exclude the idea that that penalty extends 
even to the utter loss of being. 

Let any one who does not believe this last, 
make the supposition for the moment that it 
is true, would the words "hath passed out of 
death" lose any of their meaning or emphasis? 
Would they not rather gain an added force of 
comprehensiveness and of true antithesis to 
"life." Christ thus declares that by faith in 
him, the second Adam, the life-giving spirit, 
man passes clean out from under the curse as 
pronounced in Eden — returns into the realm 
of life as if there had been no death. Of this 
deliverance, justification to which some would 
perhaps limit the passage, is but one incident. 
He that passes out of death in trespasses and 
sin passes into righteousness, but not necessar- 
ily into life; but as by union with a risen Christ, 
man passes into a vital communion of life, 
so he leaves behind more, than moral corrup- 
tion and condemnation, viz., a fatal conta- 
gion of death working to the very loss of exist- 
ence. 

In the second passage Christ's language was 
so highly figurative from the point of view of 
his hearers, that the Jews said, "now we know 
that thou hast a devil." 

But we at this day ought not to stumble at 



62 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



it, or fail to reach the fullness of its content. 
From the height from which Christ speaks, all 
thought of the body disappears, "all live unto 
him." With resurrection, life for the body, 
and eternal life for the soul, or rather with 
eternal life for the whole exalted being of the 
believer — in this glorious vista of life, the 
momentary pangs of physical death are over- 
looked. There is no death for the believer 
which for the moment seems to Christ worthy 
of mention. 

But one might almost as well limit the sense 
of death here to physical dissolution and stum- 
ble with the Jews, as to limit it to mere con- 
demnation. Christ could not have meant a 
death in trespasses and sin, for as unbelievers 
they were "condemned already." In Jesus' 
higher realms of thought, his words become 
the most literal truth. The believer never 
shall see the real death that impends over the 
sinner, and is inflicted at the last by Him who 
is able to destroy both body and soul in 
Gehenna. 

This is one of the Lord's glorious utterances 
in which he "brought life and immortality to 
light." The great thought is the promise of 
immortality through Christ. It is not a judi- 
cial idea as of justification, nor is it sanctifi- 
eation as opposed to sinfulness, but life by 
Christ; and so the half astounded, half angry 
Jews reply, "Whom makest thou thyself." 

The same is the lesson of Christ's words to 



"life" and "death. " 



63 



Martha (Jn. xi: 25), as appears plainly enough 
in the revised version, if one keep in mind that 
"live" and "liveth" in the consecutive clauses 
should be referred to the same life, i. y e., the life 
after death of the body. The whole then be- 
comes a promise that the believer in Christ 
shall after death continue to live, and that 
this life shall never cease. Therefore the at- 
tendant implication is that the life of one who 
never arrives at faith shall cease. 

I anticipate also here, and say that this life 
immediately after death is made by Christ to 
be resurrection life, by the way in which he 
bases the promise on the fact that he is the 
"resurrection." 

Christ once uses the adjective "dead" of a 
spiritual state in a rhetorical antithesis: "Let 
the dead bury their dead," Matt, viii: 32. But 
as I have said repeatedly before, such a use of 
"dead" and "death" does not rob the words 
of their primitive and natural sense when the 
connection calls for this sense. 

In Matt, x: 28, though Christ does not use 
the word "death," yet his use of the word "de- 
stroy" is equivalent to "cause to die," as is seen 
from its connection with the preceding word, 
"kill:" "And be not afraid of them which 
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, 
but rather fear Him which is able to destroy 
both soul and body in hell." This is certainly 
equal to saying : Fear him which is able to hill 
both soul and body in hell. And what is it to 



64 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



kill the soul in hell? Is it to keep it ever alive 
there that it may suffer eternally? It is safe 
to say that the idea never would have occurred 
to any one if it had not been for that other 
idea that ^ soul cannot be killed because of 
its inherent immortality. But Christ speaks 
here of one who is able to kill the soul, viz., of 
Him who made the soul. Christ throws this 
out as a warning and an intimation, and it is 
sufficiently significant. 

For farther words of our Lord relating to 
"Life" and "Death" we turn on to "the 
Kevelation of Jesus Christ which .... he 
sent and signified by his angel unto his servant 
John." Here again we find the Lord making 
use of the human instinct which associates 
present happiness with life and future happi- 
ness with continuance of life. And the prom- 
ised blessing is figured by "tree of life" "the 
crown of life" "the water of life" and "the 
book of life." Especially significant is what 
is said of the tree of life; as ii: 7: "To him 
that over cometh will I give to eat of the tree 
of life which is in the paradise of God." Here 
is a manifest reference to the exclusion of our 
first parents from the tree of life in Eden, the 
symbol of immortality. The second Adam 
now offers new access to that tree to such as 
lay hold upon him and overcome. This again 
is immortality by Christ. To him will I give 
to eat of the tree of life. Christ thus restores 
men to the ideal immortality of the first inno- 



"life" akd "death." 



65 



cence, and makes it actual under spiritual con- 
ditions. 

The reverse of this picture the "Son of Man" 
introduces in the first chapter with the words: 
I have the keys of Death and of Hades. He 
reveals the fact that there is a second death — a 
death to follow the judgment, of those who 
proved to be incorrigible sinners. He gives 
toward the close of the visions given to John 
a revelation of what this death is. He does 
not trust to abstract colorless language, but as 
if to make mistake impossible, he gives a sym- 
bolic picture of it. He causes his servant to 
see a lake of fire: "And if any was not found 
written in the book of life he was cast into the 
lake of fire." We have here a symbol of sud- 
den and utter destruction, and nothing more. 
And yet it has been held by many, and for long, 
that it is a symbol of torment. But any true 
development of symbolism fails entirely to 
show the least ground for this idea. It never 
could have occurred to any one were it not for 
the antecedent idea that souls are necessarily 
indestructible. The argument has been that 
living beings which cannot die cast into fire 
are necessarily represented to be in eternal 
torment. This denies the true symbolism by 
disputing the possibility of the thing symbol- 
ized. But who knows better than the author 
of the vision? 

If indeed those cast into the fire are to be 
regarded as imperishable, then according to the 



66 



THE TKIUMPH OF LIFE. 



law of symbolism to which I have called atten- 
tion in another chapter, the fire has become 
a symbol of purification. But I reject this 
idea, as there is no sign of any emerging from 
that lake into a new and pure life. The cast- 
ing into the fire closes the scene of judgment 
for human offenders. The change of the pic- 
ture in the case of certain symbolical beings I 
speak of in its place. The great contrast of 
human fate in the book of Eevelation is be- 
tween the Book of Life and the Lake of 
Fike. Fire is the great antagonist of life, and, 
symbolically, its great antithesis. 



LIFE BY GOD. 



67 



CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE BY GOD KEVEALED IK HUMANITY. 

"The law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus." 
— Rom. viii: 2. 

"Our Saviour Christ Jesus who abolished death." 
—II. Tim. i: 10. 

"God himself being manifested in human form for 
the renewal of eternal life." — Ignatius to Ephesians, 
cap. 19. 

"Thou art the antidote of our mortality and the 
resurrection of our entire frame." — Liturgy of the 
Holy Apostles. 

"Abolished death!" What words to re- 
sound along the ages of our death-enslaved 
world. It would seem that they can have 
been but rarely understood, or the tide of 
joy and the songs of victory would have 
risen higher among the sons of men. But 
the words stand as plain and as true as 
any of the good tidings divinely sent to 
men. Christ hath abolished death by bring- 
ing in life anew and making it immortal. 
The work was begun in the first promise in 
Eden and its completion is declared to be his 
last victory won for our race: "The last enemy 
that shall be abolished is death." With the 
utter abolition of death, with the vanishing of 
the last fear and idea of death, with the cast- 



68 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



ing of death by personification into the lake of 
fire, is ended Christ's redemptive work, "Then 
cometh the end when he shall deliver up the 
kingdom to God the Father." 

But how? How has he saved man from 
death, in all its contagion penetrating to the 
deepest recesses of life? By the law of the 
spirit of life in Himself. What is this law? 
The gospel is the divine plan for our rein- 
vestiture with life. It includes the divine 
methods or self-imposed conditions of bestow- 
ing life and the divinely appointed methods of 
receiving it. As life was lost by sin it must 
certainly be regained through righteousness. 
Even divine grace cannot reinstate us without 
it. "That as sin reigned in death, even so 
might grace reign through righteousness unto 
eternal life." Romans v: 21. To save man 
in his sin, to give life to sin, never entered the 
mind of God. "The spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus" must in some way be a spirit of right- 
eousness. Our offences are in the way of our 
life. Therefore "God so loved the world that 
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
belie veth on him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." John iii: 16. 

And he was 6 'delivered up for our trespasses 
and was raised for our justification" (dikaiosis, 
i. e., making us righteous), Romans iv: 25. 
Here was the incarnation of divine-human 
righteousness in and for the race. Here God 
Cully revealed his great purpose and work of 



LIFE BY GOD. 



69 



carrying on his creation begun in Eden by lift- 
ing it up into a life spiritual and immortal. 
In his Son "was life, and the life was the light 
of men/' not that the incarnation was a realis- 
tic infusion of life into the race. Then it 
must have been written: In him was life and 
the life was the life of men. 

But no, it is written so as to point out that 
this life is appropriated by the perception and 
reception of the individual soul: "The life 
was the light of men." Had Adam never 
sinned an incarnation may have been needed 
and granted to lead him the upward shining 
way unto perfected life, but not such an in- 
carnation in its relations and incidents. Death 
in man must be cured by the death of one 
greater than man, that "through death he 
might bring to naught him that had the power 
of death, that is, the devil. " Then there would 
be hope for a newly implanted life. The Son 
was delivered up to an incarnation of humilia- 
tion. Death had entered by a severing of man 
from God; man lost his hold upon the Ever- 
living One, the source of life. There could 
be no real, self-sustaining, no eternal life, un- 
less a reunion be effected of man to God. To 
achieve this God must come down to man. 
Man cannot climb up to establish it himself, 
even if the longing for it remained; but alas, 
the loss of love for this union is the most dire- 
ful part of the sundering. 

And so the Son "verily not of angels doth 



70 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of 
Abraham, . . . that he might be a merci- 
ful and faithful high priest in things pertain- 
ing to God to make propitiation for the sins 
of the people." 

Behold then life once more united to our 
race, the creative, indestructible, eternal life 
interwoven by the divine hand with the body, 
mind and soul of man. 

This was God's first step. He drew near 
and cast life anew into the nature of man. 
' 'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, 
and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only 
begotten from the Father." But to the men 
of his generation the glory was veiled. And 
he "emptied himself, taking the form of a 
servant." He was delivered up to suffering 
and to death. "And being found in fashion 
as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obed- 
ient even unto death, yea the death of the 
cross." This adding of humiliation, suffering 
and death to incarnation explains the ' 'law of 
the spirit of life" that we are studying. 

Had the law been merely that of a magical 
engrafting of life by the touch of deity to our 
nature, no suffering, no death would have been 
necessary. But as life could only reign again 
by righteousiiess, a way, the means of right- 
eousness must be provided. 

To do this the soul must be reached and 
drawn out toward God. Christ did this by 
making himself that which was typified by the 



LIFE BY GOB. 



71 



Jewish sacrifice. Sacrifice was a machinery 
of worship,, an acting of worship through 
which the heart could ascend and fix itself 
upon God. Sacrifice is not to be explained by 
theological views of Christ, but Christ was ex- 
plained to the world in advance by sacrifice. 
Yet it was not the typical character of sacri- 
fice that made its value to the ordinary Jewish 
worshipper. It was complete in itself to him 
as the vehicle of his piety toward God. When 
the sinner brought his sin offering, laid his 
hand on the head of the bullock or kid, slew 
it and gave it to the priest with which to make 
atonement for him with the sprinkled blood 
and the savor of burned fat, he, if a true heart, 
worshipped in holy obedience, and accepted 
forgiveness as promised him. He had con- 
fessed his guilt and desired forgiveness; the 
bringing of the offering did that. His hand 
upon the head of the victim made it to repre- 
sent himself. The slaying of the victim was 
an acknowledgement of his own ill desert, of 
the fact that sin merits death. The blood be- 
fore the Lord and the savory incense meant 
consecration to God. That upon these rites 
the man was forgiven was no necessary result, 
but merely God's free and gracious gift. He 
had then a righteousness which God had offered 
to accept. Christ made himself the way of the 
world's righteousness which had been shadowed 
forth in these sacrifices, "Him who knew no sin 
he made to be sin (sin offering) on our behalf, 



72 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



that we might become the righteousness of 
God in him." "For it is impossible that the 
blood of bulls and goats should take away 
sins." "But now once at the end of the ages 
hath he been manifested to put away sin by 
the sacrifice of himself." 

The divine sacrifice instead of a new victim 
for each sinner and each sin was made repre- 
sentative for all who would avail themselves of 
it: "Because we thus judge that one died for 
ally therefore all died." II. Cor. v: 14, 15. 
Not, one died instead of all, and so all did not 
have to die, by a law of substitution, but all 
did die in the death of Christ allowed by God 
to be representative. And it becomes repre- 
sentative when embraced by the faith that there- 
by confesses sin and desert of death . ' 6 We behold 
Him who hath been made a little lower than 
the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffer- 
ing of death, crowned with glory and honor, 
that by the grace of God he should taste death 
for every man " Heb. ii: 9. Here is vicarious- 
ness in death, not vicarious penalty, for what 
is penalty for the sinner is but pain for Jesus, 
but benevolent representative death. 

This is part of God's thoughts for our race, 
the full sum of which no man doubtless can 
fully fathom. 

But the record stands: that in behalf of — 
(Greek, huper) every man Christ should taste 
death. And thus it is that Christ is said to be 
a curse for us. "Cursed is every one that hang- 



LIFE BY GOD. 



73 



eth on a tree/' when applied to Christ utters 
his humiliation in his work in our behalf, 
not penalty, but chosen self-humiliation. 

As Justin Martyr said so long ago: "For the 
statement in the law, 6 Cursed is every one that 
hangeth on a tree/ confirms our hope which 
depends on the crucified Christ, not because 
He who has been crucified was cursed by God, 
but because God foretold that which would 
be done by you all." Seediac Trypho, c. 96. 

God's next step in bringing in life and salva- 
tion for us was to offer in his Soli a represent- 
ative righteousness to be embraced by our 
faith. 

The pious Jew had been permitted to pre- 
sent a righteousness by a sacrificial faith in the 
place of the real righteouness by faith of the 
Christian ages. 

This righteousness by faith in the world's 
great sacrifice is the "something better concern- 
ing us that God has provided. ' ' This righteous- 
ness of the Son was not alone his divine holi- 
ness when preexistent in the bosom of the 
Father, but human righteousness perfected in 
obedience and tested by suffering, even the 
extreme of fatal suffering on the cross. 

This righteousness has been offered to our 
hands. Herein is the excellence of "the 
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world." Bulls and goats had no righteousness 
that could be grasped by the hand of faith, 
and so "their blood could not take away sin." 



74 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Bulls and goats were not the Living One, 
union with whom could impart life. 

But the Christ, the world's great sacrifice, 
was both incarnate righteousness and incarnate 
life. 

Here is vicariousness of righteousness, right- 
eousness offered to the embrace of the soul by 
faith. 

Faith presents our confession, our penitence, 
our acknowledgement of the desert of death, 
our prayer for forgiveness. Our love seizes 
upon his perfect obedience and declares: Would 
that it had mine; makes it ours by the will 
for the deed, as the inspired Watts sang long 
ago: 

"My faith would lay her hand 
On that dear head of thine, 
While like a peniteDt I stand 
And there confess my sin." 

Here is justification unto life: "Even so 
through one act of righteousness (better, life 
of righteousness) the free gift came unto all 
men to justification of life." 

"Even so through the obedience of One shall 
the many be made righteous." Rom. v: 18, 
19. 

Here is the vicariousness of Him who, after 
suffering to rescue, provides his own garment 
to cover, his own pledge to sustain. Here is 
objective righteousness and our subjective faith 
laying hold of it — both essential to our justifica- 
tion and life, "That God might himself be 



LIFE BY GOD. 



75 



just and the justifier of him that hath faith 
in Jesus." Kom, iii: 25, 26. 

The being "just and the justifier of him 
that hath faith in Jesus" is the passage often- 
est recurred to by disputants on the doctrine 
of atonement. Many make 4 'his blood" the 
leading idea of the passage. I regard this as 
a mistake. The leading idea is "faith," "faith 
in Jesus." The "blood," or death represent- 
ed by it, is subordinate as that which pre- 
sents Jesus to the acceptance of human faith, 
and the faith lays hold on a divine sacrifice 
perfected by suffering and death. God is just, 
justifying believers, i. e., those who have be- 
come identified with a sacrificial Saviour. 

This representative death, this vicariousness 
of death in Christ is often called in theologi- 
cal discussion expiation or propitiation. 

But these words come to us from the Latin, 
which did not have the providential prepara- 
tion for Christian ideas that the Greek had. 
They came into Latin theology fresh from pa- 
gan rites in which the conception was of ap- 
peasing angry gods that delighted in blood, 
and were only willing to bless when this fiend- 
ish thirst had been assuaged. These words 
through the subtle power of language have in- 
sensibly caused the minds of interpreters to 
swerve to most unfortunate grossness in the 
anthropomorphism in which relations of God 
to sinners are sometimes pictured, as if the 
wrath of God were pacified by some piaculum 



76 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



in what Christ has done or suffered, something 
to meet the demands of retribution beyond 
acting as our sacrifice and becoming the ve- 
hicle of faith and mercy, and thus leading to 
reconciliation and restoration. 

We do better to pass straight from the Greek 
into our own Saxon, and talk of "mercy-seat" 
and "atonement.'"' 

The cross was the great mercy -seat where 
the incarnate God came down under the de- 
mands of love to meet the penitence and faith 
of returning sinners. 

In the Greek of the Xew Testament, Christ 
is said to be hilasmos and hilasteerion. When 
we turn back to the Septuagint for the use 
of these terms and their congeners, we find 
them to mean sin-offering, mercy-seat, for- 
giveness, merciful, gracious, and the like. 

But the idea of the sin-offering, and the 
shedding of blood without which there was no 
remission, in the Old Testament, is vastly 
different from that of the sacrifices of the 
heathen. It is the vehicle of confession of sin, 
of the acknowledgement of the desert of death, 
and of faith in the divine promiser of forgive- 
ness. 

In the institution of sacrifice the attitude 
of God was a point carefully guarded. He 
was never represented as demanding sacri- 
fice to pacify his anger. His wrath was never 
said to be turned away by sacrifice. The He- 
brew idea of atonement is the covering or 



LIFE BY GOD. 



77 



forgiveness of sin. The words of Nehemiah 
describe God's attitude in appointing sacrifice. 
"Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious 
and merciful, slow to anger and of great kind- 
ness/' ix: 19. 

Then hilasmos is used of the accomplished 
conciliation and remission of sin. Thus Ps. 
cxxx: 4. 

"But there is forgiveness with thee that thou 
mayest be feared." Dan. ix: 9. "To the 
Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, 
and, xix, 0 Lord hear; 0 Lord forgive;" Num. 
xiv: 19, "as thou hast forgiven this people 
from Egypt even until now." The noun, the 
verb, and the adjective all appear in these cita- 
tions. They all express mercy and the grace 
of forgiving love. 

Here then we have a safe basis on which to 
interpret the New Testament use of the same 
terms. In the New Testament, we first meet 
the verb in the prayer of the publican: "Lord 
be merciful to me a sinner;" then in Heb. ii: 
17: "To make reconciliation (old version) for 
the sins of the people." 

But it is as "a merciful and faithful high 
priest" that Christ makes reconciliation for 
the sins of the people, not merely as himself 
the sin-offering. 

Here is God as the incarnate Son mediating 
his own mercy, offering to man a sin-offering 
for his use, and then as interceding priest pre- 
senting to God that sin-offering laden with the 



78 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



faith of penitent believers. These two pas- 
sages speak only of divine mercy and atoning 
love. Then conies Eom. iii: 25, in which Christ 
is said to be set forth "as a propitiation/' hi- 
lasteerion, "through faith, by his blood." 

If we give the preference to this rendering 
over "mercy-seat," which it is very doubtful if 
we ought to do, still the almost exclusive use 
of the word in the Septuagint in this latter 
sense must have been present to the mind of 
Paul as he wrote. His thought must have 
been that Christ was the vehicle of the divine 
mercy to all who have faith in him. 

The mercy-seat in the tabernacle represent- 
ed the point of advance, so to speak, to which 
God came to meet those who would turn to 
him even as the father in the parable goes 
forth to meet the returning prodigal. 

In Heb. viii: 12, the adjective "hileos" is 
used of the features of the new covenant: "I 
will be merciful to their iniquities, and their 
sins will I remember no more." John, in two 
passages of his first epistle, says Christ is the 
hilasmos for our sins, rendered "propitiation." 
It is most significant that Christ is said to be, 
but never to make hilasmos. That is, he is 
ever the living atoner who mediates the divine 
mercy and human faith. 

Hence Paul says: He was raised for our jus > 
tification, i. e., to carry out and apply the 
work provided for and begun in his death, by 
responding as a living omnipotent Saviour 



LIFE BY GOD. 



79 



to the faith reposed in him by penitent sin- 
ners. 

In the view so common that the efficacy of the 
atonement lay in a something objective con- 
tributed by the sufferings of Christ, his resur- 
rection had logically no part in justification. 
The resurrection becomes, so far as justifica- 
tion is concerned, a mere self -recovery of Christ 
from his humiliation and return to his preex- 
istent glory. 

In the first passage, from John (ii: 2), great 
light is thrown upon the meaning by the fact 
that it is used in connection with the term 
6 'paraclete, 9 ' 6 6 advocate. " "If any man sin we 
have an advocate with the Father, J esus Christ 
the righteous, and he is the propitiation for 
our sins." 

It is the advocate who makes the "hilasmos" 
for our sins. Eecall here the use of this term 
in the Septuagint for forgiveness or the state 
of reconciliation, and you see that the advocate 
is the reconciliation, that is, the actor in effect- 
ing the reconciliation for our sin. We then 
arrive at the precise sentiment of Paul in II. 
Cor. v: 19: "God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto himself . " The other passage 
in John's Epistle, iv: 10, agrees with the first 
in saying that God so loved us that he sent his 
Son to do the work that Paul says God did 
do in him. 

It is worthy of note also that in the early 
Greek liturgies, the special prayer for mercy 



80 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



and forgiveness is called the prayer of the hilas- 
mos.* 

We must exclude the idea therefore that God 
could not bring life to the guilty without first 
inflicting & penalty upon the innocent. 

In all discussion of atonement we stand upon 
the acknowledged meaning of the Greek word 
rendered atonement in the old version. That 
meaning is reconciliation. It is affirmed that 
the word atonement has changed in meaning 
and come to signify "both in popular usage 
and in theology, something leading the way 
to reconciliation." "We have no concern at 
present with any such authority. We study 
the Xew Testament idea of the atonement di- 
rectly from the specific language of the Bible. 

And there is no Scripture, as we understand 
it, for an atonement which is a great treasury 
of piacular merit provided by Christ other 
than his death as our sin-offering and his per- 
fect righteousness, both to be appropriated by 
our faith. Under the Jewish law there were 
as many atonements as there were accepted 
offerings for individual sinners, and under the 

* Since writing the above my attention has been call- 
ed to Cremer on these words. He says: The verb never 
means to conciliate God; that the biblical notion of the 
Hebrew kipper differs decidedly from the profane idea 
of ' 'expiate," that the idea lying at the foundation of 
heathen expiations is rejected by the Bible. See last 
edition of his lexicon. 

I have also noticed that Origen explains hilasmos by 
the work of the Paraclete. De Princip. ii: 6, 4. 



LIFE BY GOD. 



81 



law of Christ there are as many atonements as 
there are sinners reconciled to God. And the 
possibility and actuality of this great fact of 
sinners being thus reconciled, is called by Paul 
the reconciliation (in old version, atonement). 
Eom. v: 10, 11. 

The incarnation has brought in the possibil- 
ity of eternal life. Atonement is entrance 
upon that life; while to live unreconciled to 
God is to abide under the threatening of death. 
For atonement, on man's part, is turning 
from "the mind of the flesh" to "the mind of 
the spirit which is life." But "the mind of 
the flesh is enmity against God," and "death." 
Eom. yiii: 6, 7. 

The door of life is thus opened. "For if by 
the trespass of the one, death reigned through 
the one, much more shall they that receive the 
abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness 
reign in life through the one, even Jesus 
Christ." The believer is thus united to a 
divine representative who did not si?i, and 
cannot die; cannot die, for not only was "he 
delivered for our offences, but raised for our 
justification," i. e. y to complete in his own eter- 
nal life both of body and spirit the work for 
the eternal life of all believers. Henceforth 
we are in "Christ," as the Scripture so often 
phrases it, and our future is as divinely assur- 
ed as the life of deity itself. 

This life is maintained in us and carried 
forward by the indwelling of the spirit. He 



82 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



works ever upon both our spirits and our 
bodies; "But ye are not in the flesh but in the 
spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwelleth 
in you. . . . But if the spirit of him that 
raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, 
he that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead 
shall quicken also your mortal bodies through 
his spirit that dwelleth in you." 

"The law of the spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus/' therefore, is the recall of man to life 
from the heights of the cross, and our glad re- 
turn. It is by penitence and pardon, by 
atonement effected and righteousness reestab- 
lished, by reunion to God and immortality as- 
sured. 

The second Adam, the life-giving Spirit, 
takes possession, and there can be no more 
death, but the falling away of the dust from 
the incorruptible man. 



IKFANT LIFE. 



83 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HFANT LIFE. 

"See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for 
I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always 
behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." 
— Matt, xviii: 10. 

"Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in 
heaven that one of these little ones should perish." 
—v. 14. 

"For of such is the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, 
xix: 14. 

Ointe-half of the human race die at a very 
early age. This mortality by infantile disease 
is to a great degree peculiar to mankind. It 
is not to be compared to the death of the 
young of the brute creation in which they 
become food for other animals or man. The 
death of the infant man, a being endowed 
with mental and spiritual life and whose body 
is laid carefully away to mark the hope of a 
renewed life, is an entirely different fact and 
under a different law. And we do not see the 
young of other animals the victims of count- 
less diseases which sweep them off before they 
reach maturity and answer the object of their 
lives. 

It is easy to believe therefore that infant 
mortality has special relations to our spiritual 
nature and development. And, from a philo- 



84 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



sophical point of view, since the race is ap- 
pointed to pass through an initial period of 
suffering and mortality, it is a happy law that 
brings so many to an early crisis and places 
them in a new life and hope. Would it be 
God's way with our race were it not a happy 
law? Not that it was God's only way of sav- 
ing them or that He needs this way of mak- 
ing up a majority of the saved, and thus justi- 
fying his ways to men! But God's ways are 
good. 

What the special relations are of the death 
of little children to our spiritual nature we 
are not permitted to know fully. We are 
shut up here under the law that God makes 
his revelations mostly for, as well as to, those 
who can understand them. 

Yet Christian writers, as if by a law that 
men love to dispute most sharply over what 
they know least about, have not been slow 
from the earliest times to mix up the condi- 
tion of infants with some of the gravest relig- 
ious questions, as if they afforded the best of 
evidence on one side or another. And large 
bodies of Christians believe that the initiatory 
sacrament of the church has been perverted 
from the primitive practice by a kind of argu- 
ment from necessity growing out of applying 
to infants a certain doctrine of original sin 
and its cure. Much of this discussion has in 
time past proceeded from monkish cells where 
there was little fitness for expounding or dis- 



INFANT LIFE. 



85 



cerning the facts of infant life. The angel 
eyes and lisping tongues of little children 
haye had small power to awake a "Christian 
consciousness' 7 in a celebate clergy. The 
world however will not forget it of Pelagius, 
that whatever errors he may have held, one 
monk believed in the salvation of all infants; 
and the world could well spare Augustine 
arguments to show that unbaptized infants 
must be lost. And so to repeat, the Church 
came but slowly to discern the salvability of 
all infants. 

Let us then keep very near to what Christ 
himself said on this theme, and indulge in but 
a few quite plain inferences. For Christ has 
given the world some very precious informa- 
tion, as in the words at the head of this chapter. 

1. Among the legitimate inferences from 
what Christ said I place first: That those who 
lie in infancy have a human development in 
the resurrection life; and by the resurrection 
life I mean that life which begins immediately 
after death.* The fond mother ever images 
to herself her departed babe as a babe still, 
yet a second thought shows her that it cannot 
remain a babe, nor would she have it so. If 
it is saved and makes up its share of the king- 
dom of heaven, it must have a development 
happy and glorious beyond anything upon the 
earth. There is no alternative to this but the 



* See chapter on this subject. 



86 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



belief that all the dead are in an unconscious 
fixity until the end of time, a view condemned 
by any intelligent understanding of Scrip- 
ture. 

2. But it is impossible to see how this de- 
velopment can take place without involving 
the essential features of probation. It is con- 
ceded that death itself has no power to alter 
the human constitution; and we know noth- 
ing of human holiness except by choice be- 
tween good and evil. Will any one imagine 
that infant souls in the spirit life are devel- 
oped without this power of choice, and, if not 
without the power will they be without its 
exercise ? Is holiness to be created in them 
-by divine, irresistible power? Or are they to 
unfold into purity without ever having known 
temptation? Then will they no longer be 
like us or of us. 

But opportunity for choice between good 
and evil is probation. Is it said: This brings 
into doubt the salvation of infants? If we 
were to confine our reasoning to the results of 
human experience here, it would do so; but 
we must not so limit our logic. We have the 
inspired assurance by the mouth of Paul (Eom. 
v.) that the work of Christ superabounds, i. e., 
is more than sufficient to undo the work of 
Adam's sin, and we are allowed to believe that 
under the conditions of a more favoring life 
there may be a certainty of right choice with- 
out the loss of free agency. God has ur- 



INFANT LIFE. 



87 



ranged a probation here (except in the opinion 
of the few who do not believe that there has 
been any probation since Adam's) with the cer- 
tainty that all will sin, and can he not arrange 
a trial in some other sphere with a certainty, 
not to say that all will never sin, but that all 
will be saved? Let us not doubt it. And 
let us not doubt that the members of our race 
who shall have been removed from earth be- 
fore they had chosen sin, and who shall have 
had their unfolding in the spirit life, will re- 
joice along with us at the last in right and 
duty freely chosen under a gracious leading 
adapted to their place and state. 

And we must expect, therefore, that they 
also will go to a judgment to be assigned to 
their eternal state according to the things 
done, not in this body but in the spirit's body. 
For at least in justification and resurrection 
with the just are the essentials of judgment. 
Will any one suppose that the infant dead 
will have glorification without justification? 
Then will there be a great gulf fixed between 
parents and children. Christ will not be the 
same to them as to us. The Father will not 
be the same. 

3. But if we concede the development of 
infants in this manner it opens a long vista 
before us. Such unfolding will not be limit- 
ed to three score years and ten. There will 
be no death in old age for them to suggest an 
instantaneous transition from imperfection to 



88 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



perfection, from habits of sinning to absolute 
holiness. 

Their growth and their discipline must be 
supposed to go on even to the grand consum- 
mation of Christ's redemptive work for our 
race — to "the end." 

And we are led to extend our inferences 
here beyond infant life, eyen at the risk of 
ourselves mixing up the infant condition with 
grave religious questions. If reason compels 
us to assume this progress for those w r ho die 
in infancy, how must it be with the righteous 
who die in adult years? Are they to be 
advanced at once to a condition of holiness 
that knows no progress far beyond those who 
have had almost their entire unfolding in the 
resurrection life? Or are they to be left be- 
hind for all this period and to have no growth 
till after the judgment? If we are not pre- 
pared to affirm either of these propositions we 
see the promise of a development for all the 
saved until the great end is reached. And 
there is room here for opinions as to the na- 
ture of the changes in this period of change, 
which I will not stop to discuss, but which 
will readily occur to other minds. 

This brings me to the remaining question 
regarding those who die without a knowledge 
of Christ, which I take up in the following 
chapter. 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEN. 



89 



CHAPTEE IX. 

LIFE OF THE HEATHEN. 

It is an easy transition in thought from those 
who die in infancy to those who live in a pro- 
longed infancy of intellect, knowledge and 
character. The world is full of such. We 
call certain nations heathen or pagan, as dis- 
tinguished from Christian. But Christianity 
has not yet done its work so thoroughly any- 
where, but that heathens are found among 
every people. Whether they are found in 
savage or civilized countries, they pass their 
lives without a Christian probation, i. e., with- 
out any consciousness of an offer of light and 
help from Christ, which they may accept or 
reject. True, the apostle says, they are with- 
out excuse for their sins, but our present con- 
cern is of an opportunity of salvation from 
sin. Will any be brought to judgment with- 
out an offer of salvation from sins committed? 
Paul also says: " He hath shut up all unto 
disobedience that he might have mercy upon 
all. Rom. ix: 32. It is not necessary to under- 
stand him, as do some, that all are to receive 
the mercy that saves at last, but the only in- 
terpretation which has a better claim is that all 



90 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the race shall have at some time and in some 
way a full and equal share of the one great 
mercy to sinners, viz., an opportunity to know 
and accept the Saviour of the world, the atoning 
and life-giving Christ. 

But you ask, If this is true, why is it not 
distinctly declared as a part of revelation. I 
reply, For the very good reason that revela- 
tion concerns those to whom it comes. The 
gospel is not a system of philosophy or even of 
theology. It is a concrete system of truth and 
duty for those to whom it is addressed, and 
does not undertake to say to any great extent 
what may be true of those to whom it never 
comes. To announce that there will be op- 
portunity for repentance and pardon in the 
future could form no part of an offer of salva- 
tion which calls for immediate acceptance. 
Yet such opportunity might exist for those 
who had no other opportunity. Yet we should 
expect to find principles and intimations on 
which the thoughtful could rest hope and faith 
for all classes. Nor is this going beyond the 
warrant of the letter of Scripture. Christ 
authorized his disciples to use their reason in 
the development of the great principles of 
divine administration. He once said to his 
followers with an air of rebuke, "And why 
even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" 
Lk. xii: 57. And in that ever-memorable 
utterance regarding the many mansions, Jn. 
xiv: i. The words, "If it were not so I 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEN. 



91 



would have told you/ ' are equivalent to say- 
ing: Of course it is so; you might have 
known it of yourselves from what you know of 
the infinity of the Father's wisdom and works. 

Those many abiding places must be of many 
conditions and grades; for it is absurd to 
suppose that these many spheres are all of the 
same character and use, especially as he says 
that among them he is going to prepare a par- 
ticular place for those who have become his 
disciples here on earth. These words of our 
Lord certainly give us a glimpse of a varied 
administration in the future, in which human 
interests play a part, though it is not a part of 
the present offer of salvation fully to unfold 
them. Paul also affirms an administration of 
our Lord over the dead as well as the living: 
"For to this end Christ died and lived again 
that he might le Lord of both the dead and 
the living." Kom. xiv: 9. To confine this ad- 
ministration merely to reward and punishment 
for the deeds of this life, is at least contrary 
to the spirit of Paul's words. 

Here let me set together the following pas- 
sages of Scripture. 

"The Lord is good to all, his tender mercies 
are over all his works." Ps. cxlv: 9. 

"Who in the generations gone by suffered 
all the nations to walk in their own ways." 
— Paul at Lystra. 

"The times of ignorance therefore God 
overlooked." — Paul at Athens. 



92 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

"Because of the passing over of the sins 
clone aforetime in the forbearance of G-od." 
— Bom. iii: 25. 

"For as many as have sinned without law 
shall also perish without law" (i. e., if their 
"thoughts do not excuse them," verse 15). — 
Bom. ii: 12.* 

That the second, third, and fourth of 
these passages contain substantially the same 
thought probably requires no evidence beyond 
the placing them together. Taken with the 
last and preceding context they give us Paul's 
doctrine of the Life of the Heathen. 

He makes their case to be one of temporary 
or provisions!! treatment. They were suffered 
to go their own way; their ignorance was over- 
looked; their sins were passed over. This 
does not mean that all were saved, much less 
that all were lost; for God will render to 
"every one that worketh good/' "'glory, honor 
and peace, to the Jew first and also to the 
Greek." 

"Wherein then lies this passing over of sins 
by God? Kot in one respect alone. God had 
left them without a revelation of the promised 
second Adam, the Giver of Life, and also "in 
his forbearance," he had not executed upon 

*See the close connection between verses 15 and 16 
in the text of Wescott and Hort, and Teschendorf. 
Note the fitness in associating the action of "the 
thoughts" of men with the judgment of the "secrets 
of men, " 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEK. 93 

them summary judgment for their sins. And 
we have no authority to say that this forbear- 
ance is limited to the present earthly life. 
Yet there is here no regarding their state as 
sinless; no promised exemption from deserved 
punishment. But Paul says in the first pas- 
sage from the Epistle to the Romans with the 
context, that God has shown at last what he 
is going to do in this matter of sin and salva- 
tion, what his righteousness requires of him- 
self and how sinners may gain a righteousness 
for themselves — a passage of most condensed 
thought, looking many ways. Paul does not 
indicate directly any retroactive work for the 
benefit of those who had died in sin before 
' 6 this present time;" neither does he expressly 
exclude it. He puts Gentile and Jew alike 
upon the ground of hope and fear according 
to personal character, for he was not theo- 
rizing, but admonishing living men. He says 
however to the Athenians, that noiv God com- « 
manded all men everywhere to repent in view 
of a coming judgment. The question there- 
fore arises, if the command to repent is based 
upon the revelation of "the man whom he 
hath appointed and raised from the dead," 
can the heathen who died before this revela- 
tion come into judgment on any equality with 
the rest of mankind without in some future 
mansion having also the revelation of the 
Christ and the command to repent in his 
name in addition to their "accusing and ex- 



94 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



cusing thoughts ?" And if God overlooked 
ignorance in times past, can He, the Un- 
changeable One, cease to overlook it, till the 
command to repent reaches all? Paul affirms 
of himself that he obtained mercy because he 
acted "ignorantly in unbelief/' Shall this 
plea avail with the risen Son for one of his 
bitterest persecutors, and not for those who 
have died before hearing of their Lord? Is 
there nothing better for us than a doctrine of 
"an essential Christ, " who never appears to 
men as a Saviour except in some forensic sense? 

What I have said in another chapter of Old 
Testament saints "being made perfect" in 
Christ along with us, applies with double force 
here. The faithful few among the heathen 
are not to be saved "apart from us." Nor 
can we believe that the heathen's opportunity 
to be saved shall be entirely "apart from us." 
The apostle shows that the "passing over" of 
transgressions was not a finality for the race, 
but a waiting for a time appointed in God's 
perfect wisdom. But what was its relation to 
individual transgressors? Are we to suppose 
that God had a remedy for the race as a whole, 
but no remedy for the men who had made up 
the race? It is impossible. God's love is 
for individual souls, and we cannot imagine 
that love to have been reserved in any exclu- 
sive manner for those born after Christ's ad- 
vent among men. We must believe that while 
God suffered men to walk in their own ways 



LIFE OE THE HEATHER. 95 



he had in his infinite knowledge the con- 
sciousness of what he would yet do for these 
same sinful and benighted children, who were 
passing across the scene, and disappearing 
from earth before the fullness of time for the 
revelation of his Son, the Saviour. 

But the heathen now are as the heathen 
before the time of Christ. We are not to im- 
agine for a moment that the coming of Christ 
has placed them in any different relations to 
God before the gospel reaches them. The 
"now commandeth all men to repent" is when 
the voice of Paul's successor reaches their ears. 
But if ignorance tenfold more dense than 
Paul's abides with the heathen till death, are 
they never to meet any administration of 
mercy? Are we to conceive the resources of 
the Infinite to be so meager and his dealings 
so unequal? 

Is it not far better, with old Clement of Al- 
exandria, to take it as a matter of course that 
Christ made provision in Hades for those who 
had no knowledge of him on earth ? Clement 
says:* If then he (Christ) preached the gospel 
to those in the flesh that they might not be 
condemned unjustly, how is it conceivable that 
he did not for the same cause preach the gos~ 
pel to those ivho had departed this life before 
his advent! Coming in the middle of the ages 
his light is made to shine backward as well as 



*Stro. 6. 6. 



06 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



forward and thus to "lighten every man that 
cometh into the world." How else can he be 
the Saviour of the world ? I remember wonder- 
ing as a boy why God put off sending his Son 
into the world so late,, and left so many to 
perish without the possibility of being saved 
by him. Our current orthodoxy makes but a 
poor answer to the child's question. We 
certainly do right to make the most of all the 
intimations of mercy which the Scriptures do 
contain and of all our knowledge of the ways 
of God opened to reason by the Spirit, to frame 
any conclusions of hope which are not incon- 
sistent with the actual voice of the gospel. By 
this we do not encourage any to sin, for we 
say at the same time that those who have re- 
ceived the present gospel offer of mercy and 
rejected it have no grounds to expect a pro- 
bation in the future. These in the future will 
stand over against those "who first trusted in 
Christ/' as those who first rejected him. But 
for all who have not rejected Christ in actual 
purpose or willful neglect we must have hope 
in the divine goodness and absolute wisdom. 
It is not necessary for us to be able to say pre- 
cisely how this life of hope shall be condi- 
tioned. It is enough to rest upon the infini- 
tude of God our Father. 

It has always puzzled the Doctors of the 
Church that Christ said so little of the time 
between death and the judgment, and strangely 
divergent theories have been advanced to cover 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEK. 



9? 



the ground. When we recall the length of 
this period for millions of the race as measured 
by earthly time, and compare it with the span 
of life enjoyed here, its possible importance 
needs no other emphasis. It is easy to see at 
least that Christ has left room here for his 
sovereign love to make arrangements of bound- 
less extent and value for our race which 
should in no wise be incompatible with the 
present gospel dispensation. The silence with 
which Christ covered this vast period is cer- 
tainly hopeful. ISTo one will care to deny it. 
Under that silence we are allowed to honor 
his boundless love and wisdom by believing in 
a progress of the work of redemption begun in 
Eden and carried forward on Calvary. 

We will suppose it true of this time that 
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
I believe that the Scriptures contain nothing 
which excludes this hope. But as certain 
passages are cited by some as limiting all ad- 
ministration of mercy to this life, I give them 
a brief notice. 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
at ix: 27, in discussing the priesthood of Jesus 
finds some analogy, in death and judgment for 
the individual, with Christ's single sacrifice 
of himself and reappearance to complete the 
salvation of believers. But it is too much to 
say that, in affirming judgment to follow this 
life, the text excludes the possibility of judg- 
ment also following and adjusting the events 



98 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



of any other life preceding the final award. 
If it be said that judgment cannot be properly- 
said to follow upon death which is liable to 
modification after that event, I reply that this 
brief comparison, interjected in an argument 
on a widely different theme, is not specific 
enough to bear such a conclusion. When the 
point of the analogy is gained we cannot press 
the words farther with any certainty that we 
do justice to the writer's thought. In general 
the passage seems to point to a judgment of 
justification. It says, in effect, inasmuch as it 
is appointed to each man to die once — the 
bearing of his own sin — and after this a judg- 
ment, which in the case of a Christian is a 
justification, so the Son of man bears the sins 
of many in one death and in a judging or jus- 
tifying reappearance completes their salvation. 
Are we to infer from this that Christ does 
nothing between his death and reappearance 
which concerns his justifying work? If not, 
why infer that no man can do anything be- 
tween death and the judgment which concerns 
his judgment? The allusion is positive, en- 
forcing a judgment for this life, but not there- 
fore negative of judgment for some other 
sphere of life. But if one insist on thus ap- 
plying it, it should be said that, as a part of 
the gospel message, its application is to 
those to whom it is addressed and not to 
those who have never heard the gospel. The 
record for judgment can be closed at death 



LIFE OF THE HEATHER. 99 



for those who receive the gospel without 
being thus closed for those who have not re- 
ceived it. 

The same is to be said of II. Cor. v: 10: "For 
we must all be made manifest before the judg- 
ment seat of Christ that each may receive the 
things done in the body." 

Eev. xxii: 11, 12, instead of referring to 
the death of each individual, is rather limited 
by what follows to the coming to final judg- 
ment of the Alpha and Omega. 

Moreover, we understand the Bible to con- 
tain distinct intimations that grace for a part 
of mankind is extended beyond this life. 
This is the idea of the much discussed passage, 
I. Pet. iii: 19. It can hardly be necessary at 
this late day to add anything to the exegesis 
which has led the Eevisers to their translation 
of this passage. Any other view is now seen by 
most minds, capable of judging, to be merely 
dodging the thought of the writer. And 
with reference to Peter's specifying the wicked 
of Noah's time as those to whom the preach- 
ing of Christ was directed, it should be borne 
in mind that if he wished to refer to a period 
of darkness he would from his standpoint 
more naturally go back to the old world before 
the light of Moses and the prophets than to 
other heathen. Peter again says, iv: 6, that 
the gospel was preached even to the dead, 
pointing back plainly enough to what he had 
said in the previous chapter, and then goes on 



100 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE, 



to suggest a living according to God in the 
spirit. 

Here. I say, is a suggestion of grace and 
hope for some in the future. It does not fol- 
low that all who hear a gospel in the spirit 
world embrace it, but it reveals redeeming 
agencies at work. If now we look among the 
words of our Lord for anything that could 
have opened this matter to Peter, we are re- 
minded of Jn. x: 16: "And other sheep I 
have which are not of this fold, them also must 
I bring, and they shall hear my voice, and 
they shall become one flock, one shepherd." 
Peter introduces the passage cited above by 
words (iii: 18) which are equivalent to those 
with which Christ introduces these as to his 
laying down his life. His sacrificial death is 
in both passages united with his call of grace 
to those of another fold. 

It is fairly inferable also from Jn. i: 9, that 
Christ's light must be given to some after 
death, for it is to *' 'lighten every man, ?? which 
it certainly cannot be said to do in this life. 
In Heb. ii: 9, we are told that Christ is 
"crowned with glory and honor, "fhat by the 
grace of God he should taste death for every 
man. We cannot limit this to the Christian 
ages nor to Christian peoples. But reason 
demands that we interpret it of some things in 
Christ's work that shall be available for all, and 
that all shall at some time have personal knowl- 
edge of what has been done for them and oppor- 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEX. 



101 



tunity to accept it. Also in the new song of 
the redeemed, Key. ii: 9, it is said, "For 
thou wast slain and didst purchase unto God 
with thy blood men of every tribe and tongue 
and people and nation. In that last heavenly 
ascription of praise, all are seen to be alike 
related to the work of Christ. 

Again, why does Christ single out one sin, 
that against the Holy Ghost, as one that shall 
not be forgiven in the life to come (Matt, xii: 
32) but remain "An eternal sin," (Mk. iii: 
29), if there is not to be forgiveness there of 
some other sins? That Augustine believed 
that there was such forgiveness is well known. 
But the impassable gulf fixed between the rich 
man and Lazarus will be cited as proof that 
no change to a better state can happen to 
any dying impenitent. This however is an 
attempt to force the parable beyond what it 
legitimately teaches. The rich man was a son 
of Abraham. He had been educated in the 
law of God. He represents therefore those 
who had enjoyed the ministrations of divine 
grace under the old dispensation and had re- 
jected the truth. In Christian ages he can 
only stand for those who have in this life 
spurned the gospel. It is false reasoning to 
infer from his hopeless state that they who 
have never had a ministration of grace here, 
cannot have it hereafter. It must be remem- 
bered also that the rich man is not in Gehen- 
na, as appears from his brothers being yet 



102 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



alive. The Xew Testament, as I have said, 
nowhere represents men as sent at death to 
Gehenna. That doom is awarded only at the 
judgment. He is suffering pain and fear, but 
not the symbol of final destruction.* It is 
apparent also that a condition of suffering 
and anxiety for the repentance of others would 
indicate a hopeful state for any who had not 
been hardened into hopelessness by the rejec- 
tion of revealed truth, f Set over against this 
picture of the rich man and Lazarus, Christ 
preaching in Hades to those who never had 
heard of either Moses or himself, and you 
have our argument for hope for the heathen. 

Nothing is more common in pulpit instruc- 
tion than the affirmation that death cannot 
change our moral nature. Let us assume this 
to be true. Then man must retain his 
capacity of moral enlightenment, his power of 
repentance and his power of right action. 
Unless, then, man is judicially cut off from the 

* See chapter on Symbolism of Fire. 

f Some may be interested to compare at this point the 
opinion of Augustine. He says: But temporary pun- 
ishments are suffered by some in this life only, by 
others after death, by others both now and then, but 
all of them before that last and strictest judgment. 
But of those who suffer temporary punishment after 
death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains 
which are to follow that judgment, for to some, as we 
have said, what is not remitted in this world is re- 
mitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with 
the eternal punishment of the world to come. — City 
of God, Bk. 21: 13, Dodd's translation. 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEN. 103 



possibility of these things and denied all 
measures of grace, we must expect his moral 
nature still to act, and with an intensity 
corresponding to his circumstances. If he has 
become fixed in the rejection of light in this 
life he will probably remain so still; if he has 
not had any light, he may be expected to 
respond to it when he reaches it. And can 
anything less than a positive declaration make 
us believe that the grace of God is not ex- 
tended to his creatures in every conscious life 
they enter upon in his universe? 

Dr. Noah Porter* would limit this proba- 
tionary opportunity to the first vision of Christ 
upon entering the next world. This will 
doubtless be all that is needed by those who 
carry with them any germ of a godly character, 
that has sprung up in conscience led by the 
spirit, but I cannot suppose that our Father 
has no fostering grace for his human chil- 
dren who have had no light of revelation and 
may require time for their development and 
mayhap also the labors of us who here "had 
before hoped in Christ." Let us at least hope 
that when the heathen after death shall see 
Jesus, He shall in some way appear to them 
also as " crowned with glory and honor that he 
by the grace of God should have tasted death for 
every man" among them. Thus too will the 
words of Paul (Eph. i: 10) gain a fuller sig- 



* North American Review, March, 1878. 



104 



THE TfUUMPH OF LIFE. 



nificance: "Having made known unto us the 
mystery of his will according to his good 
pleasure which he purposed in him unto a 
dispensation of the fullness of times, to sum 
up all tilings in Christ, the things in the 
heavens and the things upon the earth/' And 
we shall be less embarrassed in giving a gen- 
erous interpretation to his words to Timothy 
I. ii: 4, where he declares it to be the will of 
God that all men should come to a knowledge 
of the truth as a means of salvation, 

God has shown himself immeasurably more 
merciful than the imagination of men has 
been ready to picture him. Jonah could not 
abide that God should not destroy the Xine- 
vites, because he understood that his word 
was pledged to it. In later times compare our 
Lord's parable of the tares with the attempt 
of men to exterminate heresy from the Church. 
Let us leave room in our systems of truth for 
the operations of a wisdom in God for reach- 
ing all his creatures, that shall be a fit count- 
erpart to his love. If God is love, God is also 
wisdom. 

A probation for the heathen in the future 
has been called a "new departure." But we 
differ from our Xew England fathers only in 
the phrasing of our hopes. Men who recall 
the theological language of forty years ago 
well remember the phrase: "The uncovenan- 
ted mercies of God/' as a common expression 
of those times. This covered the ground of 



LIFE OF THE HEATHEK. 105 

hope for the heathen, and for many whom the 
tender hearts of friends could not call heathen. 
It did not expound God's possible methods, 
nor the extent of his mercy, but was a way of 
expressing a faith in an administration of 
mercy beyond what is revealed in the gospel 
for those to whom the gospel had never effect- 
ively come. "Verily there is nothing new 
under the sun." "That which has been is that 
which shall be." Man's reason and man's 
hopes are ever the same, and still the word of 
God abideth sure so far as it has been spoken. 

But some prefer to bring a practical test to 
this doctrine, and say that it will "cut the sin- 
ews of missionary effort." But is the great 
impulse to Christian missions a desire to give 
the heathen a chance to escape from a hell of 
endless sin and suffering? Does that sound 
much like our great commission? Are we so 
base? Are we so under the one motive of 
fear? Have we. forgotten that the motive of 
fear carried beyond a certain point paralyzes 
all nobler motives? 

The idea with which Peter began his mission- 
ary work appears in his address after the mir- 
acle at the Beautiful Gate of the temple: "Unto 
you first, God having raised up his servant, 
sent him to Mess you in turning every one of 
you from your iniquities." Acts iii: 36. The 
Lord himself gave Paul his missionary com- 
mission by voice from the sky: "The Gentiles 
unto whom I send thee to open their eyes that 



106 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



they may turn from darkness to light and 
from the potver of Satan unto God, that they 
may receive remission of sins and an inherit- 
ance among them that are sanctified by faith 
in me" Acts xxyi: 18. 

What was the motive that moved Paul? 
Though he reminded men of the terror of the 
Lord, as one means of persuading them after 
he reached them, yet for himself he said, 
"TJie love of Christ constraineth us, whom 
we proclaim, admonishing every man and 
teaching every man in all wisdom that tve 
may present every man perfect in Christ " 

Christ was first announced to the world as a 
saviour from sin, and the true motive for 
spreading a knowledge of him in the world, 
in addition to the simple obedience to his 
command, is the desire to save living men 
from sin ivhile they are living, and to extend 
the reign of Christ over the whole earth. This 
begins in them the salvation that shall extend 
over the eternal future. But it is not neces- 
sary for our zeal that we believe that God's re- 
sources of grace will be exhausted with our 
efforts. To many the world would thus look 
far too hopeless. But when we believe that 
we are but co-working with a God who will 
bring in his boundless possibilities to complete 
the work he directs us to begin, then it is that 
we can go forward in the strength and courage 
of the Lord of Hosts. 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



107 



CHAPTER X. 

RESURRECTION LIFE. 

Theee is a spiritual body. — Paul. 

Is the Soul by itself man? No . . . If the Saviour 
proclaimed salvation to the soul alone, what new thing 
beyond what we heard from Pythagoras and Plato 
and all their band did he bring us ? — Justin Martyr. 

But that which hath received both understanding 
and reason is man, not the soul by itself; man, there- 
fore, who consists of the two parts, must continue for- 
ever. — Athenagoras. 

Now Spiritual men shall not be incorporeal spirits, 
but our substance, that is, the union of flesh and spirit, 
receiving the Spirit of God, makes up the spiritual 
man . — Iren^us. 

The work of the "Life-giving Spirit"* 
stops not with assuring immortal life to the 
soul of man, but carries forward the work of 
creation — the inbreathing of life into man — by 
filling the primal capacity for immortality with 
the real beginnings of eternal life for body as 
well as soul. The citations from the Fathers 
given above are a part of their arguments for 
a resurrection by reconstruction, but they are 
equally adapted to the real Pauline doctrine 
of a resurrection by unfolding. The early 
apologists were not in a position to discern 
the full truth in this matter. The evolution- 



*I.Cor. xv : 46. 



108 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



ary plan of the universe, including man, had 
not yet discovered itself to the mind of man- 
kind, as it has in our times.* 

It is to Paul, after Christ, that we are in- 
debted for all that we are permitted to know 
of this work. And his doctrine is that 
through both life and death God works out an 
incorruptibility for the whole man, and our 
bodies are to be "conformed to the body of 
his (Christ's) glory/" Phil, iii: 27. This is 
the divine evolution of the eternal man. In 
the eighth of Eomans Paul marks the steps of 
this genesis of eternal life. 

A closely imitative translation of the first 
part of the ninth verse reads: But ye are not 
in flesh but in spirit, if indeed the Spirit of 
God dwells in you. 

The tenth verse shows that being "in spirit" 
and having the Spirit of God in us is equiva- 
lent to having Christ in us, and that, in that 
case, though the body dies, this "spirit" 
(human held in close union by the divine), 
lives. This is the first step. 

Then in the eleventh verse it is promised 
that the divine Spirit dwelling in us shall 
make alive our mortal bodies. Mark, it is 
not said that God will thus quicken our dead 
bodies, but our mortal bodies. This seems to 
be a promise to infuse the principle of the 

* But Origen anticipates to a great extent our most 
advanced ideas. See Contra Celsum, v: IS, 23. 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



109 



resurrection life into our bodies during the 
present life, by the indwelling of the Spirit. 
This makes us ready for a bodily as well as a 
soul life immediately after death. This is the 
second step; and by it we become possessed 
of the power and working of the "life by 
Christ" in our whole being. 

We thus enter upon our last conflict assured 
of a triumph. While dust returns to dust, all 
that divine power through the Spirit has 
evolved in man takes on incorruption. 

And here we see the difference between the 
"incorruption" of revelation and the "immor- 
tality" of philosophy. Immortality was for 
the soul. Philosophy could see no hope for 
the body. But "incorruptibility" is for the 
man, rescued and transformed, but man still, 
body and soul. Such is the divine choice of 
language to be the vehicle of revelation. 

Incorruption is the opposite of death as pre- 
sented to the senses; and it itself suggests 
that there is a material essence in man that es- 
capes the visible corruption. This has been 
thought to be a modern advanced opinion 
growing out of the evolutionary thought of 
modern science, but there is evidence that the 
germ at least of this view was held in the 
early Church. 

Polycarp, in his prayer at his martyrdom, 
says: "I give thee thanks that I should have 
a part ... in the cup of thy Christ unto the 
resurrection of eternal life both of soul and 



110 THE TKIUMPH OF LIFE. 



body through the incorruption from the Holy 
Ghost." Martyrdom of Poly carp, chap. 14. 

And Irenaeus says: "But we do now receive 
a certain portion of his Spirit tending toward 
perfection and preparing us for incorruption, 
being little by little accustomed to receive and 
hear God, which also the apostle terms an 
earnest . . . This earnest therefore thus dwell- 
ing in us renders us spiritual even now, and 
the mortal is sivalloived up by immortal- 
ity. . . . This however does not take place by 
a casting away of the flesh, but by the impar- 
tation of the Spirit. " v: 8. 

And Origen says: . . . Since it is an attri- 
bute of the divine nature alone, i. e., of the 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to exist without 
any material substance and without partak- 
ing in any degree of a bodily adjunct, another 
perhaps may say that in the end every bodily 
substance will be so pure and refined as to be 
like the ether, and of a celestial purity and 
clearness. How things will be, however, is 
known with certainty to God alone, and to 
those who are his friends through Christ and 
the Holy Spirit. De Princip. i: 6. 4. 

Tertullian, also, as is well known, held to a 
certain corporeity of souls. De Anima, chap. v. 

It is no objection to this view that this 
germinant essence within us escapes our sense 
perceptions at present. The world is growing 
very familiar with entities that escape its ob- 
servation except by their effects. 



RESURKECTIQST LIFE. 



Ill 



Who has seen the vehicle that now carries 
the human voice almost without limit of dis- 
tance? 

Make the diamond a little more transparent 
and you will need other eyes than ours to see 
it. Or do you suppose that the worm that 
crawls forth into the sunshine is conscious of 
the change that is already shaping it for a 
new element? But the eye of the superior 
being who can concentrate the light upon its 
organism beholds it with perfect distinctness. 

It is a matter of surprise, in view of what 
Paul has written, that the opinion has gained 
such currency in the past that there is a state 
of life after death in which spirits exist with- 
out bodies, i. e., without a hold upon matter 
which gives them an objective form and de- 
fined locality. "The separate state" has be- 
come a familiar phrase. But there is no 
scriptural authority for it, as we conceive. 
The intormediate state is not a separate state. 

There are two states or stages of the resur- 
rection life, one preceding the general recall 
to the sphere of the renewed earth, and the 
other the eternal state following it. But the 
former is the resurrection as truly as the lat- 
ter, and is so spoken of in the scriptures, and 
neither state is without the body which "God 
giveth as it hath pleased him." Paul's 
words: "There is a spiritual body," have been 
misunderstood. "Spiritual" has been taken 
to mean non-material, whereas the form of 



112 



THE TKIU-UPH OP LIFE. 



the Greek word shows that it means simply a 
body which belongs to the spirit,, or is ani- 
mated by the spirit; just as in the previous 
clause he calls our present bodies psychic 
bodies, i. e., bodies animated by the psychee or 
present natural life. And it would be just as 
reasonable to interpret psychic bodies as bodies 
which are nothing but psuchee, as to make 
spiritual pneumatic bodies nothing but spirit, 
pneuma. Paul, properly read, affirms that 
spirits have bodies, and he illustrates by say- 
ing that God has given to every seed its own 
body, i. e., not new seed like itself, but the 
plant into which the seed grows. This is the 
point of contrast between the "bare grain" 
and "the body which shall be." So "the 
celestial bodies" are no more our present bod- 
ies than the kernel of wheat is the perfected 
plant. The relation of the present to the fu- 
ture body is germinant and fixed "after itg 
kind." This is the measure of identity be- 
tween the two. 

A bodiless life can be nothing but thought 
and feeling entirely undiscernible by other 
personalities of its kind, if indeed such a life 
is capable of being fairly imaged to the mind 
at all in any positive way. The conception is 
essentially negative. It is mere thought in 
the wind; no not even that, for wind has its 
body. The quotations I have made from the 
Fathers are most pertinent here. 

The opinion of such an existence has arisen 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



113 



from the fact that we lay aside in the grave 
all of matter belonging to us that is now visi- 
ble to us, and forget of what varied and ten- 
uous forms matter is capable. We have for- 
gotten that the more subtle forms of matter 
seem to have even greater force than the 
grosser forms, and yet remain well defined 
forms of matter. We make hasty conclusions 
from our present senses instead of looking to 
the power of God. "Ye do err, not knowing 
the scriptures nor the power of God." 

We are now prepared to understand Paul in 
the first ten verses of II. Cor. v. Nothing 
could be more squarely opposed than these 
verses to the idea of a state of life separate 
from any form of body. In his desire to 
depart and be with Christ he has no thought 
but that of rising to a more ample and stable 
personality in all that defines the human per- 
son. He says in effect that death is not an 
unclothing but a new-clothing, that absorbs 
the mortal by revitalization — a sivalloiuing up 
of life. He says expressly that he desires this 
reclothing that he may not be found naked. 
But what nakedness is there like spirit with- 
out body? 

That the intermediate state is a part of the 
resurrection life is sufficiently clear from the 
words of Christ (Matt, xxii: 32), where in reply 
to the Sadducees he referred to the patriarchs 
long dead as in the resurrection life: "But as 
touching the resurrection of the dead have ye 



114 THE TRIUMPH OP LIPE. 



not read that which was spoken unto you by 
God, saying I am the God of Abraham and 
the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. God is 
not the God of the dead but of the living." 
That God was not then the God of the dead 
but of the living is Christ's own proof of the 
resurrection. This shows that the patriarchs 
had already entered upon the resurrection life. 

Possibly some one may quote as against this 
conclusion the words of Peter at the Pente- 
cost: "David ascended not into the heavens. " 
But a little thought ought to convince any 
one that Peter here, in fixing the reference of 
the Psalm to the Messiah, means simply to say 
that David had had no such experience as Christ 
had, and had not entered upon the final state 
of which Christ's resurrection body was the 
first fruits. It is not to be supposed that he 
denies to David what Christ had affirmed of 
the patriarchs and what Moses and Elijah 
appeared as enjoying in the mount of trans- 
figuration. 

In the verses preceding what Christ said 
about the patriarchs he had said that in the 
resurrection men should be as the angels of 
God; and the close connection shows that he 
is speaking of such resurrection life as Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob were enjoying; for he 
passes directly from answering their questions 
involving a supposed difficulty to improve the 
opportunity, to demolish their scepticism re- 
garding the resurrection. 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



115 



Men therefore pass immediately to a state 
like that of the angels. But angels are al- 
ways represented as controlling material forms 
sufficiently dense to appeal to the senses of 
man. 

This body of the intermediate state may be 
at first in a condition analogous to the infancy 
of our present bodies, or it may be perfect 
from the first in its adaptation to the sphere in 
which it finds itself. We know that at the 
last the whole change shall come oyer the 
then Hying "in the twinkling of an eye," and 
the living must then, as ever, include those of 
every age. 

But it will be asked how this view can 
harmonize with the scripture representation 
of a simultaneous resurrection of all at the 
end of the world. This representation is too 
definite and too often repeated to be accom- 
modated to any theory of the coming of Christ 
which does not provide for a grand crisis, 
both in time and space relations, which is still 
future. For example in John v: 26-29 the 
language easily covers the constant gift of 
resurrection life as believers die, and also the 
final establishment of all in their eternal state. 
"The . . . hour now is when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God, and they that 
hear shall live." But "the hour cometh in 
which all that are in their tombs shall hear 
his voice and shall come forth." 

Christ says nothing of "with what manner 



116 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



of body they come." His only allusion to 
the resurrection body is where he bids men 
beware of Him who is able to destroy both 
soul and body in Gehenna. The doctrine of 
the apostles respecting the end is that at the 
call of the Lord men will reappear in connec- 
tion with this earth and enter upon a new life 
from this sphere of existence as a center or 
home; that the dead shall rise from their 
graves and the living be changed and all ap- 
pear with bodies "conformed to the body of 
His glory." 

But the grand fact, that explains this sim- 
ultaneous reappearance which we call the gen- 
eral resurrection, is the change promised to 
come upon the heavens and earth themselves. 
"Seeing that these things are thus all to be 
dissolved . . . according to his promise we 
look for a new heaven and a new earth where- 
in dwelleth righteousness." II. Pet. iii: 13. 

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; 
for the first heaven and the first earth are 
passed away and the sea is no more." Eev. 
xxi: 7. 

And this word: "Yet once more signifieth 
the removing of those things that are shaken 
as of things that have been made, that those 
things which are not shaken may remain." 
Heb. xii: 27. "I go to prepare a place for 
you." John xiv: 1. There seems to be indica- 
ted in these passages a final development of this 
planet to fit it for the home of the righteous. 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



11? 



Hence I have said above that the final state is 
pictured to us under new space as well as time 
relations. 

There must be some truth here which God 
can communicate to us in no better way. 
Any such final unfolding of the earth itself 
would naturally., perhaps we should say, nec- 
essarily, be accompanied by a farther develop- 
ment of the beings recalled to inhabit it as 
the center of their activities. To expect this 
it is only required that we believe that in our 
future we shall be subject to progressive life 
under the hand of the infinite Father as we 
have been in the past. In this last consum- 
mation, "the coming of the day of God," 
(II. Pet. iii: 12) we see what is oftenest spoken 
of as the resurrection. But nothing revealed 
concerning it is opposed to the belief that 
men enter upon a resurrection life for body 
as well as soul immediately after death. 

As opposed to the error that the soul has 
no life at all, i. e., is unconscious during all 
the time preceding the final gathering togeth- 
er, it is sufficient to cite passages such as 
Christ's promise to meet the dying thief in 
paradise; the assertion of Christ that Lazarus 
at death was conveyed to Abraham's bosom, 
and indeed the whole parable of the rich man 
and Lazarus; Paul's desire to depart and be 
with Christ; the messenger who brought the 
revelation to St. John, who declared that he 
was one of John's human brethren; also 



118 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

John's vision of the souls of those who had 
been slain, Moses and Elijah in the mount 
with Christ, and the dead to whom Christ is 
said to have preached the gospel. 

The dead therefore are in no sense literally 
in their tombs. When then they are spoken 
of as in the tomb, and as coming forth from 
the tomb, it is easy to see that the language is 
used of visible disappearance and reappearance 
from the earthly point of view. The last that 
is seen of the visible man is the body deposit- 
ed in the sepulcher. In the language of the 
eye therefore the dead are in their graves. 
And so in the same language they are said to 
return by the way they disappeared. There is 
also in this language a profound assertion of 
the personal identity of the risen man with 
his former self; and this is what constitutes 
the veritable resurrection. 

Those who insist that the identical particles 
of matter that made up our earthly bodies 
must be raised, fail to show how such identity 
consists with the "incorruption" of the risen 
body. They are obliged to suppose that in 
the act of reconstitution the matter is 
changed, else corruption would still belong to 
it, and is not an evolution more in accord 
with what we know of the divine working 
than a fiat at the last moment which shall 
make over each body into the celestial 
body? Especially, as the process of bringing 
in the new life is, as we have seen, the 



RESURRECTION LIFE. 



119 



work of the Divine Spirit upon both body 
and soul. 

Hence it is perfectly natural to regard the 
body of the intermediate state as a prepara- 
tory condition to the final manner of life of 
the redeemed. 

It may be asked, if the celestial body is 
quickened by the Divine Spirit dwelling in 
man and is the work of the second Adam as a 
life-giving Spirit, how the wicked can have 
part in the resurrection. 

The difficulty in answering this question 
comes from God's method in revelation. The 
future is mostly made known to us by prom- 
ises, and there are no promises to the wicked 
save as they cease to be wicked. God's threat- 
enings do not require any setting forth of the 
"how" they are raised. That they are raised 
is plainly declared, and the parable of the 
rich man and Lazarus pictures a conscious life 
in Hades for sinners immediately after death. 
But if they have not yielded themselves to the 
indwelling of the Spirit, then no "Spirit," in 
Paul's sense, has been formed in them, nor 
has any present quickening of their "mortal 
bodies" taken place. 

They are certainly in some way left far be- 
hind the righteous. 

The quickening upon which depends the 
endless life they do not share in as long as 
they are estranged from God and Christ, "for 
this is life eternal that they should know thee 



120 



THE TBIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the only true God and him whom thou didst 
send, even Jesus the Christ." But while the 
primal sentence remains suspended for the 
spiritual part of their being, their life must 
go on under the eye and according to the all- 
sufficient wisdom of the Creator. 

And as the time when the mortality of the 
body is to work out the natural death of each 
one is known only to God, so with the final 
mortality of the soul, its time is subsequent 
to such a resurrection as God has seen fit to 
appoint to it, and, as we shall find Justin 
Martyr saying, the soul will endure in punish- 
ment as long as God wills. 

J ohn in the Kevelation indicates (xx : 5) some 
kind of separation in time of the rising of the 
wicked from that of the just. But exactly 
what is meant here is involved with another 
question, viz., the character of the rising that 
precedes the thousand years. 

For my present purpose, which is chiefly to 
outline the source and nature of the resur- 
rection life, it makes little difference whether 
the general recall of the dead be all at once 
or be divided into two by the space of a thou- 
sand years. But I strongly incline to the be- 
lief that the premillennial resurrection of the 
revelation is nothing more than what I have 
called the intermediate stage of the resurrec- 
tion life. John says that he saw the souls liv- 
ing. In view of the way in which men separate 
in thought the dead from this earthly sphere 



RESURRECTION' LIFE. 



121 



and speak of them as souls, there seems to be 
no reason for his using this term unless he 
designed to indicate a life not visible on the 
earth. He connects their "living" closely 
with "reigning with Christ." And that 
Christ has been reigning over the earth in 
carrying forward its redemption ever since his 
ascension no one doubts. But if we were 
carried back to the gloomy days of the first 
persecutions we might need just this revela- 
tion to enable us to believe it. And nothing 
could so cheer and strengthen the sufferers of 
such a period as a glimpse of those who 
had been beheaded and burned, alive in the 
spirit world and received into co-working with 
Christ in the glorious administration of His 
kingdom. That the carpenter of Nazareth 
was to have the shaping the world's destin- 
ies was not as clear in John's time as it has 
since become; who then would have dreamed 
that the era was at hand when all time, the 
world around, would be reckoned in years of 
Jesus Christ? 

Here is a sense in which the days of the 
Son of man have already come. 

As to the exact time, a thousand years, that 
is probably a part of the framing of the pic- 
ture, or we may take the last thousand years 
of the present period as furnishing the sub- 
stance of the picture. Beyond this the genius 
of prophecy will probably not let us go. 

It is not to be expected that men will come 



122 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



to an agreement precisely what to anticipate 
in regard to the coming and reigning of the 
Son of man, for it is of the nature of prophecy 
not to be understood in fall until it is ful- 
filled. Else the world would keep itself busy 
trying to prevent or work out by human con- 
trivance such fulfillment. 

But to return to the rising of the wicked; 
as their life is not a reigning with Christ it 
may be that this is all that John intended by 
saying that they lived not till the end of the 
thousand years. The life and the recall of 
the incorrigible is but for judgment and is 
not life from the point of view of Christ's 
kingdom on the earth. But the revelation 
was given to John for the comfort of the 
saints, and not to gratify curiosity regarding 
the future life of unbelievers. 

Of course if there is to be a premillennial 
resurrection to this earthly sphere, then John's 
"first resurrection" is not the same as the 
present resurrection state of the departed. 
But this would in no degree impair the argu- 
ment for a present resurrection life as I have 
outlined it. 

With the resurrection life our Triumph of 
Life objectively begins. 

The sainted dead, clothed in white robes, are 
now waving the palms of victory. "And they 
cry with a great voice saying: Salvation unto 
our God which sitteth on the throne and unto 
the Lamb. . . These are they which came out 



KESUKKECTIOK LIFE. 



123 



of great tribulation and they washed their 
robes and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb; therefore they are before the 
throne of God and they serve Him day and 
night in his temple. And for this we all long, 
not "that we would be unclothed, but clothed 
upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of 
life." 

Note. — The question is often raised whether the idea 
of the resurrection of the body is exclusively a biblical 
idea. To answer this question it is needful to dis- 
tinguish between an idea and a formulated doctrine. 
There are few biblical ideas that have not some shadowy 
anticipations or fading relics, it is often difficult to 
determine which, in the li terature of the early pagan 
nations. The Egyptians had an idea of the immortal- 
ity of the body, and possibly of its reanimation upon 
the earth, though Wilkinson says that their writings 
do not contain a doctrine of the resurrection. The 
Egyptian Book of the Dead, chap. 42, after compar- 
ing the various parts of the body to those of different 
Gods, says: There is not a limb of him without a God. 

Thoth is vivifying (or watching) his limbs. Not a 
day he has not been squeezed in his arms or clasped 
in his hands. Men, Gods, Spirits, the Dead, mortals, 
beatified Spirits, Illuminated, do not make any attack 
upon him. He it is who comes out sound. Immor- 
tal is his name. 

Beholder of millions of years, that is his name. 

And in chap. 155, under the vignette of the Sun 
shedding its rays on the mummy on its bier: Hail 
my Father Osiris. My limbs are with thee, thou 
dost not corrupt ... I am! I am! I live! I live! I 
grow! I grow! I wake in peace. I am not corrupted. 
I am not suffocated there. I grow tall. My sub- 
stance is not sent away. My ear does not grow deaf. 
My head and neck do not separate. My tongue has 
not been taken away; it has not been cut out. My 
eye-brow is not plucked out. No injury is done to 



124 



THE TRIUMPH OP LIFE. 



my body. It neither wastes nor is suffocated in that 
land for ever and ever. Bunsen's Egypt's Place in 
Universal History, vol. v. 

But the Book of Hades says: The earth belongs to 
thy mummy, heaven belongs to thy soul. Records of 
the Past, vol. x. sec. 8, A. 

What have we here but the faint dawn that pre- 
cedes the sun-rising of Revelation, as we might expect 
from the harmony of God's work in man's thoughts. 

As regards the Persians, it has been boldly claimed 
that the J ewish and Christian doctrine of resurrection 
was derived from the Zoroastrian system. But more 
recent investigations seem to have shown satisfactorily 
that the ancient Zendic writings contain no such doc- 
trine, and that it does not appear in Persian literature 
until a date later than the Jewish exile. 

This makes it probable that the borrowing was the 
other way. For the doctrine is found in the earlier 
part of Isaiah which preceded the time of the exile. 
And whatever any one thinks of the narratives of the 
book of Daniel, it claims in general to give some ac- 
count of the carrying of the knowledge of the True 
God to the East by the Jews, and impressing it upon 
those peoples. 

And what document can the opponents of this view 
bring to offset it? See Hardwick's Christ and other 
Masters, p. 564. 

No one has claimed, so far as I know, that the Greeks 
had this doctrine except as the Stoics had an idea of 
the cyclical renewal of all things. 



THE JUDGMENT. 



125 



CHAPTEK XI. 

THE JUDGMENT. 

Judgment is often a sound of dread even to 
the believer; but Christ said much which is 
suited to prevent this impression and produce 
the opposite. Some of his most sympathetic 
and inspiring utterances relate to his office 
as Judge: e. g., "And he gave him authority 
to execute judgment because Tie is the Son of 
man" Jn. v: 27, i. e., because he can come 
to the work of judgment as a sympathizing 
brother. This he says of the Father's ap- 
pointment of the son as the Judge of the 
world. In taking upon himself this office, he 
says, as if to disarm all fear: "for I came not 
to judge the world but to save the world/' Jn. 
xii: 47. "For God sent not the Son into the 
world to judge the world, but that the world 
should be saved through him;" "he that be- 
lie veth on him is not judged," Jn. iii: 17, 18. 

The judgment will be the crisis of redemp- 
tion, the completion of the believer's justifica- 
tion. In it hope will pass into fruition, and 
all shall become eternal. 

The Scriptures represent the judgment as 
taking place upon a given day, in the presence 



126 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



of a universal assembly, with the Judge seated 
upon a throne and opening a book from which 
a verdict is pronounced. Some object to the 
reality of this picture of judgment thus fixed 
in time and place.* But it doubtless gives 
the best impression of the reality that we are 
capable of receiving. It is therefore a true 
representation, though we may well believe that 
with enlarged capacities we shall leave such 
views far behind us. 

Those who believe at all in a personal God, 
and in man's personal accountability to Him, 
must believe substantially in the New Testa- 
ment doctrine of a judgment of justification or 
condemnation for every individual of the race. 
But our relations to this great certainty and 
necessity of the future are often but illy con- 
ceived. It is clothed with terror often to those 
who should anticipate it with joy, and is look- 
ed forward to with indifference by many who 
should be filled with apprehension. The 
apostle John, in his Epistle, i: 4, 17, tells us 
that the crowning work of love is to give us 
boldness in the day of judgment, while the 
timid Christian is apt to regard such an idea 
as presumptuous if not blasphemous. Christ 
tenderly endeavored while on earth to inspire 
his followers with confidence for the future 
meeting when he should return, and to rob the 
glorious day of his appearing of all dread ex- 
cept for his inveterate enemies. The part of 
* See note at end of chapter. 



THE JUDGMENT. 



127 



the twenty-fifth chapter of Matt, describing 
the judgment scene has this evident design. 
In this chapter only has our Lord given us 
anything suggestive of the details of the final 
judgment scene. Here he has come down to 
our human imagination in giving a dramatic 
form to the greatest and most solemn event of 
the future. He places himself upon a literal 
throne, with all nations before him, and as a 
king proceeds to separate the righteous from 
the wicked, as one separates sheep from goats. 
He gives to these hosts one voice in familiar 
colloquy v^ith the king, and then appoints to 
each his final condition. The most remark- 
able feature of the proceeding of the Judge in 
this scene is the way in which the grounds of 
sentence are shifted from what at first appears 
to be a personal relation to the Judge, to the 
decided opposite, so that the award finally is 
not based at all upon a conscious personal atti- 
tude toward Christ, but upon acts and charac- 
teristics which are developed in the common- 
est walks of life. 

The king is no selfish despot, making every- 
thing depend upon obsequious watching upon 
his person; neither is he a scrupulous lawgiver 
with a lofty and absolute code in hand, scan- 
ning every detail of law on one side and life on 
the other; but everything is simple and con- 
crete in the spirit of the homeliest life. It is 
the relieving the hungry, the thirsty and the 
sick; it is kindness to the stranger and the 



128 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

prisoner, things which men often do almost by 
instinct. These are the objective standard by 
which a share in the heavenly kingdom or the 
final punishment is meted out. Christ thus 
makes the judgment what we call extremely 
practical, resting upon what is most easily un- 
derstood and constantly enacted. Could he 
have shown his divine condescension more 
clearly, and his evident design to dispel those 
fears that arise in so many miuds at the 
thought of having the whole life subjected to 
the scrutiny of the infinite and most holy God, 
with the issue of eternal life or death. 

He speaks to the hearts that warm to the 
lives of those about them, though God may 
still be a terrible name to them, and even the 
loving Christ himself seem infinitely removed 
from them. For all such, what words are 
these: 6 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 
these my brethren, even these least, ye did it 
unto me." 

Not only does the king make his award de- 
pend on what is mediate and indirect, but on 
what may be merely germlnant and feeble. 
What else mean the words: "even these least." 
It is not following the popular preacher, nor 
intimacy with the conspicuous saint. No, but 
whatever you have done or refused to do to 
the least of mine, it may be some one whom 
the world does not recognize at all as belong- 
ing to me, it may be some one farther from 
me than yourself even, that shall be the touch- 



THE JUDGMENT. 



129 



stone, lie shall be as the gate of life or death 
to you. Thus every man's judgment is 
brought to his own door, among his own neigh- 
bors, in his own household. 

And let us not suppose that this pertains 
alone to lands where Christ has been preached 
and is represented by professing believers. 
The judge has all nations before him. This 
must include nations who had never heard of 
Christ in the flesh. And the language con- 
veys the idea that the king finds sheep as well 
as goats in all the nations. And it is of sheep 
such as these that he says: "These my breth- 
ren, even these least." It destroys the whole 
power of the scene to refer it simply to those 
in Christian lands who, living after the time 
of the Lord had merely never actually seen 
him in the flesh, but had been associated with 
believers who avowedly represented him. It 
is also inconsistent with Matt, x: 40, where 
Christ distinctly said to his disciples: "He that 
receiveth you, receiveth me," and Jn. xv, "I 
am the vine, ye are the branches." Those to 
whom the gospel had come could express no 
surprise at finding Christ in their believing 
brethren, for the gospel has ever contained 
these words. No, the righteous are the 
"sheep" from among all nations. Even if 
with Alford we suppose that "the saints" 
should be conceived in the scene as already in 
glory, judging the world with the Lord, yet, 
by combining with this chapter, Matt, xix: 



130 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



28, where the twelve are promised a part in 
judging the tribes of Israel, we have a univer- 
sal judgment, while allowing "the nations" to 
refer only to the Gentiles. 

But let not any one imagine for a moment 
that in all this Christ belittles the judgment 
of the world, and deprives it of any great spir- 
itual and discriminative principle. The prin- 
ciple insisted on is love like that of Christ. 
It is finding brethren where Christ would find 
them, and doing for them in the spirit of self- 
sacrifice. It is similar to the thought in Mk. 
ix: 37, "Whosoever receiveth one of such little 
children in my name receiveth me." Doing 
for Christ's "brethren" and doing "in the 
name of Christ" is doing in the spirit of 
Christian devotion and hope, even though 
Christ in himself may not be known to either 
doer or receiver. He that takes up a little 
child in the desire of saving it or helping it as 
a creature of God receives Christ and makes 
Christ his brother. 

The spirit of responding to the wants of men 
as children of one Father in heaven is the 
spirit of Christ and brings us face to face with 
him in his work. Even as the Christian monk 
known as the "Persian Sage," Aphraates, 
wrote so long ago: "He (Christ) said to them, 
that which ye have not done to the needy ye 
have also not done to me."* 



*See Zalin's Tatian's Diatessaron, § 80. 



THE JUDGMENT. 



131 



But we are not to understand our Lord to 
say that every instinctive help, every kind- 
ness in meat and drink makes men treat him 
as a brother. For the whole race would then 
be included and there would be no goats to be 
placed on the left hand. Whereas many are 
seen to be sent to the left hand to be punished. 

They are cast away as being found destitute 
of the feeblest motions of this principle of love. 
While all who possess it, even if but in germ, 
like mustard seed and the particle of leaven, 
will be welcomed at the right hand and given 
a place in the kingdom in which the new life 
may develop. This removes judgment from 
the realm of mere nature, and lifts it to the 
plane of the spiritual, makes it turn upon love 
and self-sacrifice. 

In other words : Men will be separated by 
the all-discerning eye of the king into the 
"sheep" and the "goats." But the evidence 
to the world that they are "sheep" and "goats" 
may be only what they have done or refused 
to do to one another. If they have shown to 
one another the spirit of self-sacrifice which 
is the great law of Christ, they are prepared for 
the kingdom as the kingdom has been prepar- 
ed for them. 

But not every gift of meat and drink is in 
the spirit of self-sacrifice. To give "in my 
name" and to "my brethren" is as "the 
sheep" give; i. e., if the gift represents the in- 
ner character of "sheep" as marked off from 



132 THE TEIUMPH OF LIFE. 



"goats" it is both an element and an evidence 
of acceptable character. The man who is mov- 
ed by the spirit of love like to Christ's belongs 
to Christ and his kingdom. Unfortunately 
this is no doctrine of universal salvation. For 
too many "goats" remain who never show this 
spirit even to "one of these least/' who have 
in them no grain of the mustard seed of spir- 
itual life, none of the leaven of the heavenly 
kingdom. 

But the whole spirit of these memorable 
words of our Lord is adapted to give us cour- 
age for ourselves and a wide hope for others. 

It leads us to expect to see brethren in the 
brighter light of that day which we had not 
discerned as such here. 

And yet, this twenty-fifth chapter of Mat- 
thew is to many Christians the most terrible 
chapter in the Bible. And it is because there 
is revealed in it an eternal punishment for 
such as shall be found at the last entirely des- 
titute of any love for that which is Christlike. 
Many believers allow this terror to interpret 
all the tenderness instead of allowing the ten- 
derness to interpret the terror. 

But it cannot be a matter of accident that 
the one utterance of our Lord that more than 
all others is considered decisive for an eternal 
punishment of the wicked, is by the Lord 
himself associated with this brightest picture of 
gentleness and charity in the Judge. It is 
enough to reassure the most timid Christian 



THE JUDGMENT. 



133 



and exalt the grace of the Judge in the eyes 
of all. And what is more, this way of putting 
things by Christ is conclusive against all ex- 
aggeration of severity in interpreting the doom 
of the wicked, in determining what this pun- 
ishment and this fire are. Here is where the 
spirit of this scene has been utterly lost upon 
good and wise men who have permitted them- 
selves to be led by various theories into views 
utterly at variance with a proper conception 
of the tender love of God, and even with what 
is best in men. But of this in the chapter on 
punishment. 

Note. — Mefj.vrifj.4vot . . . /cat t>)s fJ.e\\6v<rri<; avrov Sevrepa? 
napovcrias ev rj epxerai /aera 66^175 /cat cWa/aew?, Kplvat f/ovra? 
/cat i/e/cpov's — LlTUKGT OF St. CLEMENT. 

Perhaps we ought not to be surprised or 
grieved at the great difference of opinion re* 
garding the time and manner of the second 
coming of Christ. Perhaps it is enough if we 
are ever mindful of it and open to all real 
light that is shed upon it. It was and is, as 
is generally believed, a matter of prophecy. 
And it seems to be of the genius of divine pro- 
phecy that it shall not be fully understood un- 
til it is fulfilled. Else men would be busying 
themselves with efforts to prevent or hasten 
its fulfillment. 

As the matter now stands Christians are di- 
vided between not only expectations of a pre- 
and a post-millennial coming, but between a 



134 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



looking for a future coming and the belief 
that it is a present reality. 

I shall content myself with the briefest in- 
dication of the evidence which is decisive with 
my own mind, that the coming is future and 
will coincide with the end of redemptive agen- 
cies in this world. 

In the first place Christ, in speaking of this 
very subject, viz., the claims of men that he 
had come or was to come so and so, said: "Be- 
lieve it not; for as the lightning cometh forth 
from the East and is seen even unto the West, 
so shall be the coming, wapowia, of the Son of 
man." This must mean that it will be an 
event known to all when it occurs, so that there 
shall be no possibility of dispute about it. 
There will not be needed any word of a 
preacher or writer of a book to point it out. 
It hardly needs to be said that no such univer- 
sal recognition of the second coming of Christ 
has yet taken place. Again, when speaking in 
a like style of his coming, as recorded in Luke 
17, he says of those troublous times at the de- 
struction of Jerusalem when men should vain- 
ly strive to find the Christ as their deliverer: 
"Ye shall desire to see one of the days of the 
Son of man and shall not see it, indicating 
that the days of the Son of man should not be 
associated wtih those events so disastrous to 
the Jewish people, not even in their begin- 
ning. 

The world (<uwv) to come, of which Christ 



THE JUDGMENT. 



135 



spake at different times, is identified in Luke 
(xx: 34, 35) with the resurrection life, and 
there is no evidence that it includes a concur- 
rent administration of a celestial life and a 
terrestrial like the present. Jewish ideas of 
what the Messianic age was to be are poor au- 
thority for the kingdom of Christ. a«&* is 
time-world, i. e., the world from the point of 
view of time as koo^o? is from the point of 
matter and space. 

The Messianic anticipations in the Acts, viz., 
the words of the angels (i: 11) and of Peter 
(iii: 20, 21) still seem to demand a personal re- 
turn of the Lord to conclude his redemptive 
work. 

As to the much disputed passage Matt. 24 
and its parallels, I have long inclined to the 
opinion that Bengol among commentators has 
given the true solution in marking the 
distinction between nivra ravra (v. 34 ) and 
^epas eicetVijs (v. 36), "these things/' the de- 
struction of Jerusalem and "that day," the 
end of the world. This distinction appears 
in Mark's account, and also, though less 
clearly, in Luke's. 

Some will hesitate to accept BengePs inter- 
pretation Of ev0ecos M e<ra, V. 29. But Luke 

makes the signs in the sun, etc., to follow the 
"fulfillment of the times of the Gentiles." 
These times are not yet fulfilled. The Jews 
are still afflicted, to the great disgrace of the 
Christian world, and Jerusalem is trodden 



136 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



down. See Alford on this point. It is not 
yet therefore "immediately after" the events 
Christ was predicting — not vet time for as to 
expect the sign of the Son of man. This 
agrees also with the prediction in v. 14. 
"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
preached in the whole world for a testimony 
unto all the nations, and then shall the end 
come" We must give these words an inter- 
pretation worthy of the Lord, and the divine 
method of grace. 

A lone missionary here and there will not 
answer the conditions. Nothing lout a career 
of Christian civilization for all lands will an- 
swer to a faith that honors God. 

It runs through the New Testament that 
there is to be an end of redemptive work upon 
the earth and a worlds of new and 

different life for our race. 

With this ending coincides the judgment, 
or that itself is the finishing up. 

It is nevertheless true that in an important 
sense we live now in the days of the Son of 
man. Who at the time Christ spake could 
have imagined that time would be noted, the 
world over, in years from the birth of Jesus of 
Nazareth? The Christian era is the "days of 
the Son of man." 

He also promised to be with his disciples to 
the end of the world. This he can and does 
fulfill without being visible to our bodily eyes. 
A great part of the present training of the 



THE JUDGMENT. 



137 



Church is to teach us to live in the belief that 
this promise is constantly fulfilled. Still we 
must believe that the world to come will be 
ushered in with a new revelation and pres- 
ence. 



138 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE LN" THE SCRIPTURES. 

I introduce this subject with reference to 
the nature of future punishment, to be dis- 
cussed as we advance. That fire when em- 
ployed of future punishment is used symboli- 
cally and not of material flames it is not 
necessary at the present day to argue, though 
one does not have to go far back in the history 
of opinion to find this belief. And in the 
early days of Christianity it was stoutly held 
by many. Augustine made it a sine qua non. 

He says: * "Dum tamennullo modo ilia cor- 
pora talia futura esse credamus ut nullis ab 
igne afficiantur doloribus," i. e., Provided 
nevertheless that in no way we believe that 
those bodies will be such as not to be affected 
by the pain of fire. He falls back upon the 
omnipotence of God to accomplish the effect of 
material fire upon spiritual bodies. 

It being taken for granted then, that fire is 
a symbol, when it is said to be employed in 
any way in the spirit world, the first question 
is, What does it symbolize? To answer this 
we need only to recur to its use in the Bible 
and to the well-known laws of illustrative lan- 
*De Civ. Dei, 21, 9. 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE. 139 

guage. A symbol is a material sign of a spir- 
itual power or process. Symbolic use must be 
founded upon preceding natural or non-sym- 
bolic use. In the expression of spiritual or 
metaphysical ideas, language proceeds from 
that which is natural and familiar to our 
senses. The process is that of illustrating the 
obscure or recondite by that which is well 
known. The purport of a symbol therefore is 
determined by the original simple meaning 
and use of the term in the material world. If 
one seek to carry it beyond this, it becomes no 
longer an illustration, but a term without fixed 
significance — a balloon cut from its moorings 
and lost to knowledge. 

The natural power and action of fire as 
known to our senses is twofold, i. e., upon im- 
perishable objects to refine by purifying from 
dress, and upon perishable objects, to con- 
sume. If these latter are sensitive beings, the 
destruction is accompanied with pain. 

This is the foundation upon which the sym- 
bolic use is built; for this is what ive know of 
fire and by it we can illustrate what is less 
known. 

The Bible, taking familiar facts, illustrates 
by fire God's action upon men both in this 
world and the next. And the use of " fire " in 
the Bible of God's action in this life makes an 
intervening step by which we ascend more 
securely to a right idea of its meaning when 
applied to the future. There is beside in the 



140 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Old Testament a ceremonial use of fire which 
is a farther intermediate basis on which to fix 
an understanding of its use in spiritual things 
in the New Testament. 

We pass, as not pertinent, the use of fire in 
Scriptures merely to mark the divine presence, 
as in the burning bush and on Sinai. 

The displeasure of God and his judgment in 
this life are very often compared to the work of 
fire, as Ps. xc: 3: "A fire goeth before him and 
burnetii up his adversaries round about/' 
Isa. ix: 19: "Through the wrath of the Lord 
of hosts is the land burnt up, the people also 
are as the fuel of fire." Isa. xxx: 27: "Behold 
the name of the Lord cometh from far, burn- 
ing with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; 
his lips are full of indignation and his tongue 
is as a devouring fire." I need not multiply 
citations. With these passages we naturally 
associate in the New Testament Heb. xii: 29, 
"For our God is a consuming fire." Of fire as 
a purifier illustrating God's action in this 
world, the familiar passage in Malachi (iii: 
1-3) gives an example: "For he is like a re- 
finer's fire and like fuller's soap, and he shall 
sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; and he 
shall purify the sons of Levi," etc. This 
figure is frequent in the prophets. 

The ceremonial use of fire in the Jewish 
ritual included both its destructive and its 
cleansing power. The burnt offerings were 
consumed by fire; the waste of the victims was 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE. 141 



consumed by fire,, and the ceremonial cleansing 
of things that "abide the fire" was by fire, as in 
Num. xxxi: 23: "Everything that may abide 
the fire, ye shall make to go through the fire, 
and it shall be clean." 

"Furnace" is used both of God's destruc- 
tive and his purifying work among men. For 
the former see Isa. xxxi: 9, "The Lord whose 
fire is in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem." 
For the latter see Eze. xx: 18-22, "As silver is 
melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye 
be melted in the midst thereof and ye shall 
know that I the Lord have poured out my fury 
upon you, and (v. 15) will consume thy filthi- 
ness out of thee." 

Two passages in Isaiah require special notice 
from the w r ay in which they are associated with 
the language of Christ in the New Testament. 
Indeed these verses in the last chapter of Isaiah 
are probably the basis of Christ's use of fire 
as a symbol of punishment. In Isa. xxxiii: 14 
we read, "The sinners in Zion are afraid, 
trembling hath surprised the godless ones. 
Who among us shall dwell with the devouring 
fire? Who among us shall dwell with ever- 
lasting burnings." "Fire" and "burnings" 
are here used with reference to their consum- 
ing power, and to the certainty that none could 
abide through everlasting burnings. If this 
is not plain from the verse itself, the twelfth 
verse makes it so: "As thorns cut up shall 
they be burned in the fire/' 



142 THE TRIUMPH OP LIFE. 

The other passage is the last half of the last 
chapter of Isaiah. Here we have a final proph- 
etic vision of the exaltation and glory of Jeru- 
salem. The Jews are to be gathered home and 
all the godly among the Gentiles with them. 
"All flesh" shall worship there from Sabbath 
to Sabbath. This of course is a symbolic pic- 
ture. The picture includes the Lord's indig- 
nation toward his enemies and their destruc- 
tion by fire. This destruction is conceived as 
wrought in the neighborhood of Jerusalem so 
that to the assembled saints mementoes of it 
are visible in the dead bodies of the trans- 
gressors. 

And here fire is introduced a second time, 
not as smiting living victims but as consuming 
these bodies as offal according to the actual 
custom in the valley of Hinnom at one period 
in the history of Jerusalem; a fire, not allowed 
to "be quenched/' being maintained for the 
immediate consumption of the waste of the 
city. The association of the "worm" with the 
fire is of itself sufficient evidence that entire 
destruction and nothing more is signified. 
For in the accumulation of animal offal, if 
the fire failed to reach all, the worm was sure 
to be present, and certainly, though more slow- 
ly, finish the work. The perpetual presence 
of the fire and the worm, if it has any signifi- 
cance beyond the perfect consumption of the 
"carcases," may well be taken as a symbol of 
God's unchangeable and eternal purpose to put 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIKE. 143 

away from his kingdom "everything that doth 
offend," whether such offence has arisen in 
the past or shall ever in the future arise in his 
universe. 

We note at this point then, that there is no 
use of the word fire upon which to base a sym- 
bolic use as significant of anything but de- 
struction or purification. There is nothing 
from which to derive a symbol of mere puni- 
tive suffering without either destruction or 
purification. And if Jesus Christ and the 
writers of the New Testament based their use 
of "fire," in speaking of the future life, upon 
what was already familiar to the Jewish people 
in their own scriptures, we are shut up to the 
choice of understanding them to mean by it 
either a means of destruction or of cleansing. 

But to go on and look at the use of "fire" 
in the New Testament. 

I leave one side at first all passages refer- 
ring directly to future punishment, and as be- 
fore, look at the natural agent in other rela- 
tions upon which the symbolic use may rest. 

John the Baptist, in describing the work of 
Christ, refers to the consuming power of fire, 
Matt, iii: 10: "Therefore every tree which 
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down 
and cast into the fire. But (v. 12) he will 
burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." 
Christ himself took up the same language, 
Matt, vii: 19, "Every tree that bringeth not 
forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into 



144 



THE TKIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the fire." In Mk. ix: 49, lie seems to refer 
to the alternative power of fire to consume the 
perishable, or refine the imperishable, "For 
every one shall be salted with fire" In Matt, 
xiii: 40, he approaches the subject of future 
punishment by referring to the destructive 
power of fire : "As therefore the tares are 
gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be 
in the end of the world. The Son of man 
shall send forth his angels and they shall gath- 
er out of his kingdom all things that cause 
stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall 
cast them into the furnace of fire." Paul, in 
I. Cor. iii: 12, 15, cites both the destructive 
and the purifying power of fire: "Every man's 
work shall be made manifest, for the day shall 
declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire 
and the fire shall try every man's work of 
what sort it is; if any man's work abide which 
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a re- 
ward; if any man's work shall be burned he 
shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; 
yet so as by fire." 

These are the principal passages in the New 
Testament which form an introduction to the 
figurative use of "fire" in respect to the fu- 
ture. 

Like the scripture cited from the Old Testa- 
ment they lead us to understand "fire" in con- 
nection with punishment in the spirit world, 
as typifying either destruction or purification. 
Between these two ideas we must be govern- 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIEE. 145 

ed by the preponderance of evidence. This I 
shall endeavor to present as we go on. 

But it may be necessary to raise the question 
whether the use of the adjectives "unquench- 
able" and "eternal" does not change the sig- 
nificance of "fire" when used of future punish- 
ment. These words strike the imagination so 
as to seem to many perhaps to introduce new 
elements. 

This possibly is not an unnatural error, but 
nevertheless it is an error. These terms signi- 
fy the intensity and persistence of the agent 
to which they are applied, but do not alter 
the essential force, natural or metaphorical, of 
the agent itself. An unquenchable fire is 
one thci cannot be put out so as to save any 
of the material which is burning. But no 
one understands, when it is applied to a natural 
fire 5 that the fire burns after the material is 
consumed. Hence there is no ground on 
which rest any other idea of a figurative fire of 
which the same word is used, than that of en- 
tire destruction by a process that cannot be 
checked. 

We have an example of the use of "un- 
quenchable" in connection with natural fire 
in Eusebius.* He twice uses the phrase un- 
quenchable fire (puri asbesto) of the burning 
of certain martyrs. Cruse renders it "im- 
mense fire." The impression of the narrative 
is that an unusually large fire was made in 
*Eccl. Hist., B, vi. ch. 41. 



146 THE TRIUMPH OP LIFE. 

these instances, that the mob of Alexandria 
made a kind of bonfire over the sufferers. 

The language of course is that of emphasis, 
but no one would ever think of anything un- 
natural or miraculous about the fire. 

When therefore the word is used of a fire 
which God is represented as kindling for a pur- 
pose the emphasis is that of the certainty that 
His purpose will be accomplished. Surely the 
language finds sufficient scope here. 

When eternal (aionios) is employed we have 
emphasis of a different kind, but still it is 
emphasis. And emphasis cannot change the 
nature of a symbol. A fire that burns always 
will be ever ready to consume all that is cast 
into it. But this does not imply that the na- 
ture and operation of the fire will be unlike 
that of fire that lasts but for a time. Fuel is 
not eternal. Did any one ever suppose that 
the perpetual vestal fire at old Eome was kept 
alive by unconsumable fuel? If so there would 
have been small need of the relay of virgins 
to watch it day and night. 

Here again the force added to the symbol 
comes from the purpose of Him who Mndles 
the fire. The eternity is in God, not in his 
creature of a day. The eternal fire is his un- 
changeable will to destroy and put away finally 
from his universe all that cannot be brought to 
holiness and happiness. This determination 
must relate not only to the past of our world, 
but to all worlds, mayhap to those not yet 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE. 147 

created. Hence the eternity of the fire. Why- 
should we imagine anything else inconsistent 
with the laws of speech, the dictates of reason, 
and the revealed mercy of God ? But it may 
be said that the fire of future punishment is 
not represented as fire sustained by fuel at all. 
That ideas of fuel and consumption have 
nothing to do with it. I reply, Then the lan- 
guage means nothing at all. Our only way 
of getting at the meaning of the higher uses 
of language is by what we know first in the 
world of sense. Sensible images are seized 
upon because we know so well what they do 
mean; and we need not be afraid to trust our 
knowledge. God expects us to trust it. 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus, 
though it does not contain the word "fire," 
yet requires a few words in this connection. 
The word "flame" is used in it by our Lord, 
and this has caused the parable to stand in 
many minds as great and decisive evidence 
that future punishment is to be by pains as of 
those in a non-consuming fire. I do not hesi- 
tate to admit that "flame" here is the symbol 
of pain, and not of destruction. In this it is 
an exception to the manner in which "fire" is 
used. It becomes so by the express mention 
of the pain-causing quality of flame: "I am in 
anguish in this flame." But if the rich man 
had simply been pictured as in the flames, and 
attention not been limited to the pain, the meta- 
phor would certainly have signified destruction. 



148 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

But this parable in reality does not touch 
the final punishment of the wicked at all. It 
is not a picture of Gehenna. Its scene is laid 
immediately after death and before the judg- 
ment. Christ never represents any one as cast 
into Gehenna before the judgment. The 
pains of the rich man were of remorse, and an- 
ticipatory of condemnation to a fate still in 
the future. The time for his destruction had 
not yet come, and he is not represented as en- 
during the final fate of the wicked. His con- 
dition is rather that given in II. Peter ii: 9: 
"The Lord knoweth how ... to keep the un- 
righteous under punishment unto the day of 
judgment. " 

There are two passages in the Kevelation* 
also, in which the pain-causing power of fire, 
associated with its destructive power, is made 
the basis of its symbolic use. But in these cases 
also it is by exj)ress mention that the force of 
the symbol is turned in that direction. The 
victims are said to be tormented with the fire. 
But the idea of destruction is not excluded, 
for the reason that we have in this part of the 
book a succession of panoramic vision-pictures, 
and when the actual execution occurs of what 
is hypotbetically threatened in chapter xiv: 10, 
the representation is that at least all the lm- 
man beings involved are destroyed. This is 
in chapter xix: 19-21: "And the rest were 
killed with the sword of him that sat upon the 
* xiv: 10 and xx: 10. 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE. 149 



horse." The ideal beings, "the Beast and 
False Prophet, they twain were cast alive into 
the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone." 
But it should be kept in mind that we do not 
have here a specific representation of the pun- 
ishment after the judgment day in Gehenna, 
if indeed it has any reference to it at all. 
These visions, until we come to the close, have 
apparent reference to the great conflicts of 
truth and error in the progress of the world. 
And the whole matter is idealized. The great 
powers of evil and error are idealized. The 
Beast, the False Prophet, the great Harlot, who 
are they? Certainly not individual beings of 
any order, but systems of error personified to 
make a picture. But these beings, with the 
devil, are said to be tormented unto ages of 
ages (margin of revised version). But this 
idealization is not confined to them. It is also 
said of those who worship the beast and his 
image that the smoke of their torment goeth 
up unto ages of ages. But these victims are 
also ideals. The opponents of Christianity 
have not actually worshipped a beast nor an 
image of a beast nor have had their foreheads 
or hands branded. These are merely ideal 
representatives of the adherents of the systems 
of evil and error, not human sinners A, B 
and C, in their individual relations to God. 
What then? The threatened infliction is to 
be taken in the same ideal representative sense. 



150 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



The whole method is that of the absolute, 
that of ideal intensity, in order to emphasize 
the displeasure of God against evil and his pur- 
pose to overwhelm it in the administration of 
the kingdom of his Son. This method re- 
quires that typical powers and beings arrayed 
against it should have their doom portrayed 
in the most intense language possible. Speech 
is exhausted to picture the terribleness of their 
fate, which is not simple destruction, but the 
most prolonged suffering, without however 
excluding the idea of extinction at the end. 
But we are not to take this language and ap- 
ply it to the fate of individual sinners in any 
cold literalness, any more than in the closing 
vision of the chapter we are to take as a literal 
punishment and as an exhibition of the charac- 
ter of God, the wine press of the wrath of God 
and the blood gushing out a torrent up to the 
horses' bridles for two hundred miles. The 
apocalyptic style is to exhaust the possibilities 
of language in representing absolute and uni- 
versal ideas, such as holiness, iniquity and the 
divine abhorrence of sin. But in framing 
doctrines such language should be carefully 
distinguished from the plain instruction of 
our Lord regarding the destiny of the indi- 
vidual sinner. 

Also it should not be quite forgotten that 
the early Christian fathers were not agreed, 
nor indeed have the fathers of any subsequent 



THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE. 



151 



age been agreed, to regard the Eevelation as 
the work of the apostle John. There are 
many marks that seem to stamp it as an early 
prophetic writing, indeed inspired and profit- 
able, but not a part of the apostolic gospel. 



152 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

It was a favorite remark of the late Dr. N". 
W. Taylor, that the interpretation of language 
was a balancing of probabilities. Students of 
language will certainly not fail to recognize 
the truth in the saying. Especially must it 
be true of that which is spoken but once for 
the ages, and becomes therefore addressed to 
the greatest variety of intelligence in most di- 
versified conditions. 

It is not strange then, nor to be regretted, 
that in the explanation of the scriptures every 
generation insists upon holding the scales 
anew for itself. It must be so to the end of 
time, and those who see in it only instability 
forget that there is a stability of motion as 
well as of rest; indeed the stability of the uni- 
verse is the stability of motion. 

Many express regrets that not a few Chris- 
tians at the present day are disposed to revise 
their opinions upon the divine judgments so 
as to set aside some of the ideas of terror and 
torture that have prevailed under the impres- 
sion apparently that it was impossible to mis- 
represent by exaggeration the severity of God 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



153 



against sinners. But the fact remains thai; 
the number is increasing who believe that in 
interpreting the threatenings of God men have 
mingled ideas born, not of the Spirit of God 
but of the cruelty of man's animal nature. 

The point of view of every generation is its 
own enlightenment, culture and prevailing 
ideas. It cannot do otherwise than look upon 
what has been spoken to the ages from this 
point. The world, as a whole of humanity, 
does not repeat itself, but under the adminis- 
tration of redemption is moving onward as 
in a vast orbit for a single circuit. Such an 
orbit gives the same view, and yet ever different. 

We must take the view which our place and 
time give us. 

6 'But the times are degenerate," some will 
say; "and its ideas wrong." 

Let us see. 

Were the times of the Christian Fathers or 
of the Eeformers better than ours for discern- 
ing that which relates to all time? 

Latin Christianity, as a system of thought, 
began with Tertullian. And what was the 
development of human nature in the Eoman 
world of the second century? 

For generations the favorite amusement of 
the people of the large cities had been to 
gather in vast amphitheaters, in uncounted 
thousands, to witness gladiatorial fights or the 
execution of convicts, including Christian 
martyrs, by wild beasts. Such had been the 



154 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



Roman school of thought. In this atmos- 
phere stifling with cruelty were men's minds 
likely to be clear and calm to interpret penalty 
and pain for all succeeding generations? Or 
take the time of Augustine, who was a tower 
of strength for centuries but who has in some 
matters cast a .chilling shadow upon later 
times. He wrote under the dominating ideas 
of Roman imperialism, wrote when the horrors 
of pagan persecutions were still a local and 
household remembrance, wrote, moreover, 
when all the world to him, state and church 
alike, was crumbling as at the day of doom 
under the blows of the invading hosts of bar- 
barians. 

Let us imagine ourselves carried back to 
those days, and having known no other; 
should we be in a better position than we are 
to-day to fully enter into the words of him 
who spake not for one age, but with a per- 
fect prevision of the end from the begin- 
ning. Should we be in a better condition 
to understand the forces which were in all 
time to operate for the regeneration of society? 
The world was fast approaching the time 
when the great Gregory wrote: ' 'We see 
nothing but sorrow. We hear nothing but 
complaints. Ah Rome! once mistress of the 
world. Where is the senate? Where the peo- 
ple? The buildings are in ruins, the walls 
are falling. Everywhere the sword! Every- 
where death! I am weary of life." But to 



FUTURE PUXISHMEXT. 



155 



show how greatly men's views are affected by 
current events, another century passes, and, 
as if a new world had been born, the Vener- 
able Bede breaks out at the close of his his- 
tory : "In whose (Christ's) kingdom let the 
earth exult and in a joyous faith in him 
Britannia rejoice, and let the many islands be 
glad and confess the memory of his holi- 
ness." 

Or take the times of Anselm and Bernard. 
Did they have better opportunities to under- 
stand the divine love and mercy, and the lan- 
guage of ihe Prince of Peace ? Theirs were 
times when wars, national, feudal and private, 
were constant features of society, and war a 
business of a large class even of those who 
claimed the name of Christ. They were the 
times of William the Xorman and Guy of 
Burgundy. Let a man come to this question 
of the fitness of those times to interpret for 
other times the gospel of Jesus Christ from 
reading, e. g. 9 Mr. Freeman's account of the 
battle of Hastings. 

Or compare an age that could institute or 
tolerate the inquisition with the present, which 
sends around agents of humane societies to 
put out of pain sick and lame horses, and legis- 
lates against cruelty to cats and dogs! 

And what has brought about this change? 
Has anything else had a tithe as much to do 
with it as the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of 
men? And has this Spirit made them less 



156 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



capable of reading aright his words, which 
were meant for all time, but which need to be 
spiritually discerned? Has not Christ rather 
brought us up to a height where we can see 
him more as he truly is and always was? 
— where we can read his words in the light of 
his own power and work in redeeming the 
world? These are times when our hearts are 
mercifully shielded from many things that 
have tended to embitter and warp the judg- 
ment of men of other ages. 

The reformers did great and glorious work, 
but they were called upon to wrestle with vast 
abuses and aberrations from the truth. Their 
work was to block out by large new paths for 
thought and action, but they were not in a 
position to catch all the lights and shadows of 
God's truth. ISTo, these are not degenerate 
times. Iso, let us gratefully appreciate the 
light of to-day, and devoutly looking to Christ 
read anew what he has said of the future pun- 
ishment of sinners. 

That a righteous retribution awaits the 
finally impenitent is one of the prominent 
features of the revelation Christ made to men. 
The Old Testament, as we have seen, makes 
known a death of the wicked, but gives 
scarcely any glimpse of details that can appeal 
to human sensibilities. 

But with the light of life in the gospel of 
Christ come more distinct warnings to those 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



157 



who shall reject this light. Christ, and also 
the apostolic writers, taught that there shall 
be a future punishment of the wicked, as 
plainly as they taught anything, and we must 
believe that this will be inflicted at the last 
judgment upon some, unless we admit the 
idea, as I certainly cannot, that the mere 
threatenings themselves of penalty will be suffix 
cient in some realm of grace preceding the 
judgment to reclaim all to penitence. 

For the Lord to reveal a punishment dram- 
atically which he knew never would become 
actual for any, seems to me entirely unworthy 
of God; and, beside, seems to exalt the mo- 
tive of fear into a means of grace and a power 
of which we know nothing, in this life at least. 
I am compelled by every consideration of 
reason to believe that when Christ says "these 
shall go away into eternal punishment," that 
the time is coming when such a penalty will 
be experienced by some. 

But it is not my object to dwell upon the 
certainty of future punishment, but to inquire 
as to its nature. The New Testament makes 
known a punishment of sinners both before 
and after the general judgment. These are not 
the same. There are given us glimpses of a 
state of pain between death and the judgment. 

This seems to consist largely of anticipation 
of the doom to come. And remorse can do 
its work at any time upon a soul cut off from 
(averting engagements. The rich man iu 



158 THE TKIUMPH OF LIFE. 

anguish in Hades is an example of this earlier 
punishment. 

The words of II. Pet. ii: 9 (revised version) 
seem to indicate a similar condition. The 
original word for punish here is of the same 
root as that which Christ uses for the final 
penalty. The idea of the writer is based upon 
what he also affirms or refers to (v. 4) that the 
evil angels have been committed to pits of 
darkness and reserved unto judgment. 

"Whether this ante-judgment pain can ever 
have a reformatory effect we are not inform ed, 
but no encouragement is anywhere held out 
to men to enter upon it with hope. 

Of this preliminary punitive state little 
is said, for, of necessity it falls into the 
shadow of the great final consummation of 
punishment. 

This last award is represented under vari- 
ous forms, mostly in symbols designed to im- 
press the imagination with its certainty and 
dreadfulness, that the attention of men may 
be arrested and that they be deterred from 
carelessly braving it. This is far from saying, 
however, that it is impossible to exaggerate, in 
interpretation, its dreadfulness. The word of 
Christ, in its simplicity and first necessary 
meaning, is dreadful enough. To approach 
the subject with the presumption that the 
punishment of a being finite in his capacities 
is to be made infinite in duration is to do 
violence to everything but the hardihood of 



FUTUKE PUNISHMENT. 159 



the human imagination. An excessively se- 
vere style of interpretation may not have done 
the harm in a rude and violent age, which it 
must in a cultured and humane one by caus- 
ing a revulsion against the authority of the 
word so interpreted. In a rude age men do 
not stop to think much what their words 
mean beyond the expression of present feel- 
ing. 

In interpreting the various symbols em- 
ployed we must look for their harmony. 
Their truth and pertinence must lie in what 
they express in common. Thus when de- 
struction is said to be both by eating worms 
and burning fire, it must not be conceived 
that worms can eat in fire. And when it is 
declared both that men shall be cast into 
outer darkness and into fire, it must not be 
supposed that flames would not dispel dark- 
ness. Yet all these figures are used to de- 
scribe the one fate of the wicked. 

We must therefore search for what they 
have in common as the real ideas intended. 
These ideas we understand to be banishment 
from God and a painful destruction. As I 
have said, probably no other thought would ever 
have entered into biblical interpretation had 
it not been for the idea that the life of the 
soul must necessarily be indestructible, and for 
the images of end less torture that the cruelty 
of pagan imaginations handed down to the 
Christian ages. I f any one is fixed unchangea- 



160 THE TEIUMPH OF LIFE. 

bly in the opinion that men cannot lose their 
conscious sensitive .existence, he will under- 
stand the scripture language of punishment as 
this opinion compels him. 

But he will utterly disregard, in so doing, the 
authority of this scripture as a source of light 
on the precedent question of man's future 
continuance in being. Of this I have already 
spoken. 

Christ and the apostolic writers make de- 
struction to be the penalty inflicted upon im- 
penitent sinners after the judgment; and as it 
is complete, a death without a resurrection or 
restoration, it is necessarily eternal. _ The 
pain of this death is to be measured by justice 
in the hand of Him who inflicts it. This 
Christ himself reveals in what he says of the 
few and many stripes. And let me say just 
here that no conception of punishment which 
makes its pain to be of infinite duration is 
consistent with these words of Christ. The 
finite, however small, multiplied by the in- 
finite becomes infinite. And the infinite in 
pain cannot be called "few stripes" except in 
violence to language and reason. 

In looking for the teaching of Christ in the 
record of Matthew, we find, first, that John 
the Baptist preached repentance and warned 
to flee from the wrath to come on the ground 
that the coming Christ should be the great 
destroyer of the ungodly (iii: 12). "He will 
gather his wheat into his garner but the chaff 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



161 



he will burn up with unquenchable fire." 
Then Christ himself adopts this language with 
great explicitness in the thirteenth chapter. 
First, in the parable of the wheat and the 
tares, he illustrates how it shall be in the king- 
dom of heaven, at the harvest: " I will say to 
the reapers: Gather up first the tares and bind 
them in bundles to burn them, but gather the 
wheat into my barn." On leaving the mul- 
titudes, his disciples asked for an explanation. 
It may well have been these fearful words that 
chiefly disturbed their minds, the rest seems 
plain enough. Christ's answer (vs. 26-43) is 
one of his most remarkable utterances for di- . 
rectness and completeness. It was his inmost 
thought given to his chosen circle. In it he 
unfolds with great particularity what he de- 
signed to teach of the destruction of the wicked 
at the end of the world: "As therefore the 
tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so 
shall it be in the end of the world. The Son 
of man shall send forth his angels and they 
shall gather out of his kingdom all things that 
cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and 
shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there 
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." If 
it was possible for Christ to give a picture of a 
painful and complete extinguishment of per- 
sonal life and being, he did it in these words. 
If tares are consumed in the fire that destroys 
them so are the ivicTcecl. Hence I say that such 
a revelation from Christ is the highest authority 



162 



THE TEIUMPH OF LIFE. 



on the antecedent question of the immortality 
of the resurrection life of the wicked. It is 
subject to destruction in the " consuming fire" 
of God, even as the grass of the field. 

The other passages in which Christ speaks 
of the Gehenna of fire and of the broad way 
that leadeth into destruction are to be taken in 
like manner. Taken together they are an 
awful vision of the end of the sinner, but it 
is of his end. 

Here is where it will be objected that the 
traditional view rests, and rests securely upon 
the representation by Christ that this fire of 
Gehenna is eternal. It will be said that there 
could be no need of an eternal fire simply to 
destroy the sinners of one world. But this 
idea betrays the fact that the mind is not yet 
free from the impressions that arise from con- 
templating the fire of God as material flame. 
But as the fire is a symbol of the divine 
purpose and worh, to be executed only in a 
way known to Him who can both create and 
destroy, so any adjective of duration should be 
understood as marking the permanence of that 
purpose and work. I have indicated in part 
what I hold to be the truth in this matter in a 
preceding chapter. In the further examina- 
tion of the Greek word for eternal, aionios, I 
refer to the twenty-fifth chapter of Matt., where 
it is used both of fire and punishment. 

This adjective from the noun aion, the ab- 
stract term for duration, means enduring. Its 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



163 



use with any substantive signifies that duration 
is to be understood as entering into that sub- 
stantive conception to the fullest extent of 
which it is capable. But the idea of dura- 
tion must be subordinate to the essential idea 
of the substantive itself, and not be held to 
alter that essential idea. Thus when applied 
to the absolute and the infinite, as the Deity 
and his necessary activity, it gives us the idea 
of duration without limit, but when applied to 
things which in themselves have limits, it can 
only signify duration to the reaching of those 
limits — all the duration the given objects or 
entities are capable of. Thus when used of 
destroying agents, and processes universally 
known to be terminable, the mind merely con- 
ceives a continuance to an inevitable and com- 
plete end. When used of a result it means 
permanent. Thus, judicially, of "punish- 
ment" it shuts off the possibility of reprieve 
and restoration. These shall go away into 
eternal punishment, an absolutely enduring 
'punishment. 

Perhaps no other form of words could have 
cut off so effectually the hope of reprieve, the 
idea that the punishment of the future is to 
be temporary and purgative, that the pit of 
Gehenna holds a purifying fire, especially as 
it is so easy for us to fancy that we have an 
indestructible nature. Given this idea, and the 
undeniable symbolism of fire as a purifier of 
Essences that "abide the fire," and, without 



164 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

such decisive words as these the doctrine of a 
future restoration would perhaps be unassail- 
able. 

But the words an eternal punishment tell 
nothing of what the punishment is. Their 
place in the verse in which they occur contrasts 
it with life. It is in some way the opposite 
of life. But the 41st verse gives us the great 
symbol of destruction as marking what the 
punishment is, and how it is opposed to life. 
To suppose that it is living in the fire is, we 
must believe, the cruel or unfortunate imag- 
ination of man, and not the thought of Jesus. 

To make an argument to prove that punish- 
ment must be punislw?# in the sense of the 
conscious enduring of punishment, is to show 
a determination to accept only the greatest pos- 
sible severity of language in the direction of 
pain, as the most probable dealing of God with 
his sinful creatures, of God whose name is 
Love, and who delights in mercy. And this 
dealing is after all hope of good from them is 
past. If "the interpretation of language is the 
balancing of probabilities;" if another under- 
standing is at least possible^ will men persist 
in choosing that which violates all that is best 
in ourselves and all that we know otherwise of 
God? Two interpretations being possible, we 
are bound to prefer that which harmonizes 
most readily with reason, mercy and the anal- 
ogies of nature. Why should the tree bloom 
with millions of blossoms and perfect onlf 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



165 



hundreds of its fruit? Why should the wind- 
falls be allowed to sink into the bosom of 
mother earth but the sentient being that is lost 
to good not be allowed also to become lost to 
feeling? 

As the article is wanting in the Greek, "for 
eternal punishment" read an eternal punish- 
ment. Any punishment which is eternal an- 
swers the demand of the language so far as 
duration goes. 

I have said that adding "eternal" to the 
symbol of destruction should be taken to sig- 
nify God's abiding purpose for his universe to 
put away all that offends, as the final result of 
his moral administration. 

We know not how often in yet unborn worlds 
and ages he may have to execute this purpose. 
But we are assured that the purpose abides. 
There is evidence however in this very verse 
that the destruction of human sinners is but an 
instance of this abiding of his purpose from 
the past. Christ says the fire ivas prepared 
for the devil and his angels. Here is the con- 
tinuance of the design first formed for others 
and then applied to our race. To how many 
other races it may have to be applied God only 
knows. Astronomy reveals the probability 
that the various parts of the stellar universe 
have been at successive periods, or are yet to 
become the scenes of life similar to our own. 
And we can hardly suppose that moral char- 
acter is developed in other worlds, by the one 



166 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



God and Father, through methods so unlike 
those of earth as not to involve trial and free 
choice of good or ill. If so, there may be sin- 
ners to be put away from all the various thea- 
ters of moral government during countless ages, 
for the symbol of his will toward remediless 
evil is eternal. Call this destroying purpose 
toward evil the fire of the ages and you have a 
good translation of " to pur aionion." 

The use of aionios in various connections in 
the Scriptures established the correctness of 
interpreting it according to the nature of the 
object to which it is applied, and shows that it 
more often represents a finality of result than 
a continued process. This last appears quite 
strikingly in its use by the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. 

Thus in vi: 2 he speaks of "eternal judg- 
ment." No one understands this of an unend- 
ing process of judging, Wt of n judgment 
wmch is irreversible, which shall be a finality 
for eternity. So in v: 9 "'eternal salvation" 
is not an eternal process of saving, but a sal- 
vation that is assured to abide forever so as 
not to need to be repeated. And again in ix: 
12, "eternal redemption" is a ransom that will 
never have to be paid again. There is no 
objection to accepting a proper rendering of 
aionios in these and like passages because no 
antecedent theory stands in the way as in the 
matter of punishment. I give one other ex- 
ample. What in Matt, xii: 31, 32, is said to 



FUTURE PUKISHMEOT. 



167 



be a sin which can never be forgiven, in 
Mark iii: 29 is called "an eternal sin;" and, 
as if to guard against the possibility of this 
being taken as eternal sinning, Mark uses the 
concrete individual form for the word sin, 
hamarteema, not hamartia. It is a curious 
fact too that taking the whole Bible in Greek, 
i. e., the Old Testament in the LXX, the word 
aionios is used oftener in Leviticus than any- 
other book; used of ordinances, landmarks, 
covenants, etc. And we know what kind of 
eternity was intended thereby. 

But the phrase aionion, fire, is once used in 
the JSTew Testament of an event upon this earth, 
Jude v. 7; and moreover it is there said to be 
an example* It was the burning of Sodom 
and Gomorrah and the cities about them. They 
were destroyed by an "eternal fire" If any 
one doubts it let him look for their sites and 
count the chances of rebuilding, especially if the 
waters of the Mediterranean are to be let into 
the Jordan valley according to the recommen- 
dation of certain engineers. I do not care to 
rest my argument particularly on this passage, 
yet in some respects it comes very near what 
scientists call crucial. II. Peter ii: 6 also 
cites Sodom and Gomorrah as an "example" 
of the fate of the ungodly. It is note- 
worthy too that Jude in the verse preceding 
the one quoted uses aidios, a stronger word 



* See Meyer in loc. 



168 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



than aionios, of a period with a definite ter- 
mination. As to the teaching of the apos- 
tolic writers,, I have perhaps sufficiently un- 
folded it in the chapters on "Life" and 
"Death," and with this reference to them will 
leave the matter. 

The doctrine of the New Testament I find 
to be one and harmonious, viz., a final punish- 
ment of sinners after the judgment by a death 
of the soul-man, the second death, a cessation 
of consciousness and personality, the natural 
antithesis of eternal life. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 169 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

OPINIONS OF SOME EARLY CHRISTIAN 
FATHERS. 

To go far into the history of the views I 
have advocated would take me beyond my de- 
signed limits. It will suffice to show what 
thoughts were working in a few representative 
minds before the Roman or Augustinian period, 
and then how other views came to prevail. 
But first let me mention that Olshausen, in his 
Opuscula Theologica, and after him, Laidlaw, 
in his Bible Doctrine of Man, has sought to 
turn aside the force of the testimony of the 
Greek Fathers, I shall quote, by attributing to 
them a peculiar view of the relation of soul 
and spirit — a trichotomy of man — which 
would lead them to use the word death in an 
unusual sense. What these writers say is true 
of some of the fathers, but not of those with 
whom we are chiefly concerned. It is true of 
the erratic Tatian, who was an Oriental and 
finally a gnostic leader. It is true of Origen, 
but not true of Justin Martyr and others I 
shall cite. When Olshausen with a stroke of 
his pen sweeps in Justin and Theophilus of 
Antioch he does what is about on a par with 
classing Bishop Butler with George Fox in 
English religious history. 



170 THE TBIUMPH OF LIFE. 



The fathers before Origen all in a general 
way accept eternal punishment ; and it is 
noticeable how those to whom the Greek was 
a native tongue and the language of literature 
loyally repeat the words of Christ and seem in 
an unquestioning way, most of them, to think 
of nothing but material fire. The fear of the 
eternal fire is a motive they often refer to. 
But when the most thoughtful among them 
begin to inquire into the subject philosophi- 
cally, they show that they could think to the 
bottom of a question as well as we, and cer- 
tainly knew as well as we what meaning Greek 
words were designed to convey. 

As evidence of what the early speculations 
were we have the writings of men well known to 
the Church, and compositions of uncertain 
authorship, e. g., Hernias and the Clementina. 
First among the former is Justin Martyr, who 
wrote Greek in a way that reminds you of Plato 
himself. He distinctly considers the question 
of the soul's losing its animating principle, 
and affirms the belief that under punishment 
it will finally lose it. 

He speaks by the interlocutor of the dialogue 
with Trypho thus: " But I do not say indeed 
that all souls die " (i. e., with the body), " for 
that were truly a piece of good fortune to the 
evil. What then ? The souls of the pious re- 
main in a better place, while those of the un- 
just and wicked are in a worse, waiting for the 
time of judgment. Thus some who have ap- 



EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 171 

peared worthy of God never die, but others are 
punished so long as God wills them to exist and 
to be punished." Chap. v. 

He goes on in a succeeding section, making 
his speaker criticise the views of Plato and 
others thus: 

" I care not for Plato nor Pythagoras, nor in 
short for any one who thinks thus. For you 
can learn the truth as it is, in this way: The 
soul either is itself life or it has life. If now 
it is life it would animate something else not 
itself, as also motion would move something 
other than itself. But that the soul lives no 
one would deny. But if it lives it lives not 
as being life, but as partaking in life, and that 
which shares in anything is something differ- 
ent from that in which it shares. But the soul 
shares in life, since God wished it to live. So 
also, therefore, it will not share in life at such 
time as God shall not wish it to live. For 
living does not belong to it of its own nature, 
as to God." 

"But as a man is not forever, and the body is 
not forever united to the soul, but when the 
union is broken, the soul leaves the body and 
the man no longer is, thus also when it is nec- 
essary that the soul should no longer be, the 
animating spirit departs from it, and the soul 
no longer is, but it also goes thither again 
whence it came." Chap. vi. 

In agreement with this in the seventh cnap- 
ter of the second apology he speaks of the 



172 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



" destruction of the whole world by which the 
wicked angels and demons and men shall no 
longer exist (Meeketi osi)," and yet in the 
same chapter he says that the race of angels 
and of men will justly suffer in aeonian fire the 
punishment of whatever sins they have com- 
mitted. This shows how he discriminated be- 
tween eternal fire and the eternal suffering of 
the same individuals in fire. Nothing can be 
plainer than the meaning of the writer in these 
passages, and better had it been if Justin's 
Greek common sense had prevailed in the realm 
of speculation. Many are to-day returning to it. 

The epistle to Diagnetus, which has been at- 
tributed to Justin, contains a similar sentiment 
in chap, x., where the author speaks of the 
"eternal fire which shall afflict even to the end 
those that are committed to it." 

Theophilus of Antioch (lib. ii; c. 27) 
says: "But then some one will say to us, 
Was man made mortal by nature ? By no 
means. How then, immortal ? Neither do we 
say this. But some one will say, "Was he then 
made a nothing? Neither do we say this. By 
nature then he was made neither mortal nor 
immortal. For if he had made him immortal 
from the beginning he had made him a God, 
Again if he had made him mortal, God would 
have seemed to be the cause of his death. 
Therefore neither immortal made he him, nor 
indeed mortal, but, as we have said before, cap- 
able of both, in order that if he should incline 



EAKLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 173 



to the immortal by keeping the commands of 
God he should receive as a reward from him im- 
mortality and become God ; but if he should 
turn back to the things of death in disobe- 
dience to God he should himself become to him- 
self the cause of death. For God made man 
free and master of himself. What therefore 
he brought upon himself by neglect and diso- 
bedience this God now remits to him as a free 
gift through his own love for man and com- 
passion when man is obedient to him. For as 
man disobeying drew death upon himself, so 
obeying the will of God he, who desires, can 
purchase for himself eternal life. For God 
has given to us a law and holy commandment by 
obeying which every one is able to be saved and, 
obtaining the resurrection, to inherit incorrup- 
tion." , The phrase in this passage, "As we 
have said before," seems to refer to chap. 24, 
where he says of man in paradise : God giving 
him an opportunity of advancement, that in- 
creasing and becoming perfect and being shown 
to be even a God, he might thus ascend also to 
heaven, for man was made of a middle nature, 
neither wholly mortal nor wholly immortal, but 
capable of both." 

Some will see in these passages only refer- 
ence to the death of the body and the resurrec- 
tion. But Theophilus was a contemporary of 
Justin, and it seems most probable that he held 
similar views. 

Irenaeus expresses himself variously on the 



174 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



subject of punishment, in a way that shows 
that his ideas were for the most part negative, 
and that he had not thought out carefully the 
meaning and the harmony of the passages of 
scripture he quotes. Thus at one time he 
speaks of the wicked as having an abode in 
darkness; again, as in a self-inflicted blindness, 
then as punished by eternal fire, and also as 
separated from all good.* He thus expresses 
himself homiletically. But as to the final re- 
sult of punishment he seems to hold with Jus- 
tin ; for in connection with an apparent quo- 
tation from Justin as to the soul having a life 
of its own, he says, lib. ii ; cap. 34 : 

" It is the Father of all who imparts contin- 
uance forever and ever on those who are saved. 
For life does not arise from us, nor from our 
own nature, but it is bestowed according to the 
grace of God, and therefore he who shall pre- 
serve the life bestowed upon him and give 
thanks to him who imparted it shall receive 
also length of days forever and ever. But he 
who shall reject it and prove himself ungrate- 
ful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been cre- 
ated, and has not recognized him who be- 
stowed, deprives himself of continuance forever 
and ever." " And for this reason the law de- 
clared to those who showed themselves ungrate- 
ful toward him : ' If ye have not been faith- 
ful in that which is little, who will give you 

* e. g. y Against heresies, bk. v; cap. 27. 



EAKLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 175 



that which is great ? ' indicating that those 
who in this brief temporal life have shown 
themselves ungrateful to him who bestowed, 
shall justly not receive from him length of days 
forever and ever." 

Elsewhere in harmony with this he says : 
"By their continuing in being throughout a 
long course of ages, they shall receive a fac- 
ulty of the Uncreated, through the gratuitous 
bestowal of eternal existence upon them by 
God. * * * 

"But being in subjection to God is con- 
tinuance in immortality," * * * "The be- 
holding of God is productive of immortality," 
lib. iv, cap. 38, 3. 

When we come to Clement of Alexandria, 
we are first of all reminded of our regret at the 
loss of his work, On the Soul ; for reputed ex- 
tracts from him are squarely contradictory. 
Thus a fragment from the Latin of Cassiodorus 
reads : " Hence it appears that the soul is not 
naturally immortal, but is made immortal by the 
grace of God through faith and righteousness 
and by knowledge." But a fragment from 
what is called the Barocc. MS. makes him 
say : "All souls are immortal, even those of the 
wicked, for whom it were better that they were 
deathless. For punished with the endless ven- 
geance of quenchless fire, and not dying, it is 
impossible for them to have a period put to 
their misery." 

But when we look through the complete 



176 



THE TRIUMPH OP LIP£. 



works of Clement that have survived, we find 
that his references to the subject harmonize 
with the first rather than second fragment, 
which suggests the possibility that later writers, 
after the reaction in the West against Alexan- 
drianism, threw their own color upon what they 
professed to transmit. 

In Clement's Exhortation to the Heathen he 
says, chap, ix : 

"For great is the grace of his promise : 6 If 
to-day we hear his voice. ' And that 6 to-day 9 
is lengthened out day by day, while it is called 
to-day. And to the end the ' to-day 5 and the 
instruction continue, and then the true 6 to- 
day/ the never-ending day of God, extends 
over eternity." 

In chap, xii he makes Christ say: "For 
I want to impart to you this grace bestowing 

on you the perfect loon of immortality 

I desire to restore you according to the original 
model that ye may become also like me. I 
anoint you with the unguent of faith by 
which you throw off corruption and show the 
naked form of righteousness by which you as- 
cend to God". . . . " Let us haste, let us run, 
let us take his yoke, let us receive, to conduct us 
to immortality , the good charioteer of men. Let 
us love Christ. He led the colt with its parent, 
and having yoked the team of humanity to God 
directs his chariot to immortality, hastening 
clearly to fulfil by driving now into heaven what 
he shadowed forth by riding into Jerusalem.' 5 



EAELY CHRISTIANS FATHERS. 177 

In the stromata : " So that when one falls 
into any incurable evil — when taken possession 
of, for example by wrong or covetousness — it 
will be for his good if he is put to death; for 
the law is beneficent, being able to make some 
righteous from unrighteous, if they will only 
give ear to it, and by releasing others from 
present evils; for those who have chosen to live 
temperately and justly — it conducts to immor- 
tality lib. ii, chap. 27. Again: " Such is the 
discipline of wisdom, causing pain in order to 
produce understanding and restoring to peace 
and immortality," lib. ii, chap, 2. 

Again: "And he who in the body has de- 
voted himself to a good life is being sent on to 
the state of immortality " lib. iv, chap. 4. 

Again: " And the keeping of them (the com- 
mandments) is the establishment of them, from 
which immortality results. If then the love of 
knoivledge produces immortality and leads the 
kingly man near to God the King, knowledge 
ought to be sought till it is found, " lib. vi, 
chap. 15. Now turn back to the first frag- 
ment cited and observe how naturally it follows 
these passages, and how much more the other 
fragment sounds like Tertullian and Augus- 
tine. 

One Latin writer, at least, of the second cen- 
tury seems to have agreed with the Greeks. 

Arnobius says : " This I say is man's real 
death, when souls which know not God shall be 
consumed in long protracted torments with 



178 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



raging fire;" ii: 14, and : "But if men either 
knew themselves thoroughly or had the slight- 
est knowledge of God, they would never claim 
as their own a divine immortal nature, ii: 
19. 

Ignatius to Poly carp says : "Be sober as an 
athlete of God, the prize set before thee is 
immortality and eternal life," chap. ii. 

"But the gospel is the completion of immor- 
tality."* To Philippians, 9. 

When we come to the writings of doubtful 
authorship referred to above, we no longer 
have the authority of great names, but still we 
have evidence of what ideas were current at 
the time. 

First among these is the recently recovered 
"Teaching of the twelve Apostles." This is 
very remarkable for its simple and most beauti- 
ful testimony to Christ as the revealer of im- 
mortality. We find no reliance upon philoso- 
phy in these early disciples. They say : " We 
thank Thee, Holy Father, for the knowledge 
of faith and immortality which thou hast made 
known through Jesus Christ thy child." And 

* Dr. Lightfoot, in his recent great work on the 
epistles of Ignatius, says: " The idea of a^eap^Ca [ n jg. 
natius is not merely immortality but moral incorrup- 
tion as carrying with it immortal life." Vol. ii, p. 
121-8. 

In one passage Ignatius seems to overlook any resur- 
rection of the wicked. Dr. Lightfoot renders: "It 
is death to gainsay the gift of God. They must learn 
to love if they will rise again," Smyr. ch. 7, 



EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 179 

for the rest they are content to say, that the 
way of sin is the " way of death" and that the 
wicked ''perish." 

The Shepherd of Hermas was the Pilgrim's 
Progress of the early Christians, and attained 
an authority next to that of scripture. 

It makes the punishment of sin to be death, 
and makes it very plain that it uses death in 
the sense of loss of being and not a state of sin 
and suffering. 

Thus: "Happy are all they that do righteous- 
ness, they shall not be destroyed forever/' Vis. 
ii. " These kinds of men are ordained unto 
death," Sim. vi: 2. "Because that when they 
had life -they rendered themselves liable to 
death." Sim. vi: 2. " Ruin has some hope of 
a resurrection, but death has eternal destruc- 
tion," Sim. vi: 4. "These have utterly lost 
life," Sim. viii: 8. "These shall be found 
dry and fruitless in that world and as wood 
shall be burned up * * * for the sinners 
shall be burned because they sinned and re- 
pented not," Sim. iv: 4. 

In the Clementine Homilies we read : "Part 
being punished with eternal fire shall be 
consumed. For they cannot endure forever 
who have been impious against the One 
God," iii: 6. 

"Many perish utterly after punishment," 
iii: 59. 

"If they have not stood in the service He 
Himself appointed, they come under the charge 



180 



THE TRIUMPH OP LIFE. 



of neglect, and shall be utterly quenched with 
the great punishment," yii : 7. "And so as to 
the soul, it shall after punishment be destroy- 
ed," xvi: 10. 

Even Origen, with all his hope of a final res- 
toration of all, was not altogether uninfluenced 
by this line of thought ; for he says in one 
passage: " For in this way he who is such as his 
Creator wished him to be, will receive from 
God powe*' always to exist and to abide for- 
ever." De Princip. i: 3, 8. 

After this review no one will doubt that the 
doctrine of personal destruction as the outcome 
of future punishment was one of the accepted 
theories in the early Greek Church. 

And this testimony of Greek winters is suffi- 
cient to show that it was from no necessity of 
the interpretation of the Greek scriptures that 
opposite opinions prevailed later, and became 
the doctrine of the church under the lead of 
Augustine, and other Latin writers. 

The reaction which took place against the 
opinions of the Greek fathers can perhaps be 
accounted for when we recall Origen and the 
bitter controversy which sprang up over his 
opinions in the third and fourth centu- 
ries. 

Origen was carried on in his speculations to 
the hope of a universal restoration, as is well 
known. Still even this aberration does not 
appear in what was among his latest utterances 
on the subject of punishment, In Contra 



EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 181 



Celsum viii: 39 and 40, he says: " And finally 
as to the punishments threatened against 
the ungodly, these will come upon them after 
they have refused all remedies and have been, 
as we may say, visited with an incurable mal- 
ady of sinfulness. Such is our doctrine of 
punishment, and the inculcation of this doc- 
trine turns many from their sins." In an 
earlier work, De Principiis, he distinctly brings 
out the doctrine so often insisted on in recent 
times that "sin is its own fire for punish- 
ment." ii, x ; 4-5. 

With some exceptions one feels that those 
who in the darker centuries following sat in 
judgment- upon Origen were like those who 
condemned Galileo. But the reaction came, in 
the African-Latin mind, born in great part of 
the hardness engendered by continued persecu- 
tion, and of the despair of the last Eoman 
days. 

To give an example of what arguments fi- 
nally overcame the common-sense philosophy 
of Justin, and such as agreed with him I ap- 
pend some passages from Augustine's City of 
God: "What then can I adduce to convince 
those who refuse to believe that human bodies, 
animated and living, can not only survive 
death, but also last in the torments of everlast- 
ing fires? They will not allow us to refer this 
simply to the power of the Almighty, but de- 
mand that we persuade them by some example 
* * * If therefore the salamander lives in 



182 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



the fire, as naturalists have recorded, and if 
certain mountains in Sicily have been continu- 
ally on fire from the remotest antiquity until 
now, and yet remain entire* these are suffi- 
ciently convincing examples that everything 
which burns is not consumed. * * * Who 
but God, the Creator of all things, has given to 
the flesh of the peacock its antiseptic property? 
This property, when I first heard of it, seemod 
to me incredible ; but it happened at Carthage 
that a bird of this kind was cooked and served 
up to me, and taking a suitable slice of flesh 
from its breast I ordered it kept, and when it 
had been kept as makes any other flesh stink- 
ing, it was produced and set before me and 
emitted no offensive odor ; and after it had 
been laid by for thirty days and more it was 
still in the same state. 

" "Who gave to chaff such power to freeze that 
it preserves snow buried under it, and such 
power to warm that it ripens green fruit ? 

"But who can explain the strange properties 
of fire itself which blackens everything it 
burns though itself is bright ? Then what 
wonderful properties do we find in charcoal 
which is so brittle that a slight pressure pul- 
verizes it, and yet is so strong that no moisture 
rots it. What then enables it to last so long 
without rotting, though buried in the damp 

* Augustine here follows Tertullian. See Apology, 
chap, 48, at close. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 



183 



earth, except this same fire which consumes all 
things ? 

"Again, let us consider the wonders of lime ; 
for besides growing white in the fire, which 
makes other things black, it has also a myste- 
rious property of conceiving fire within itself. 
Itself cold to the touch, it yet has a hidden 
store of fire which is not at once apparent to 
our senses, but which, experience teaches us, 
lies as it were slumbering within it. And it 
is for this reason called quick lime, as if the 
fire were the invisible soul quickening the vis- 
ible substance. But the marvelous thing is 
that this fire is kindled when it is extinguished. 
For to disengage the hidden fire the lime is 
drenched with water, and then though it be cold 
before it becomes hot by that very application 
which cools what is hot. Yet there is a greater 
marvel still; for if you treat the lime not with 
water but with oil, which is as fuel to fire, no 
amount of oil will heat it. 

"We know that the loadstone has wonderful 
power of attracting iron ; when I first saw it I 
was thunderstruck * * * These and num- 
berless other marvels, let those sceptics who 
refuse to credit the divine writings, give me, if 
they can, a rational account of, * * * 
for they say reason cannot admit that flesh 
burn and remain unconsumed, suffer without 
dying." Lib. xxi: sec. 2-4. 

What a drop from Justin and Origen to 
Augustine ? If literature furnishes a more 



184 THE TRIUMPH OJb' LIFE. 



striking proof of the necessity that every age 
should investigate and illustrate truth for itself, 
I do not know where to find it. And yet Augus- 
tine has been accepted not only as the teacher 
of ages darker than his own, but of the pre- 
sent, 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



185 



OHAPTEK XV. 

THE TIRUMPH OF LIFE. 

Death is swallowed up in victory. I. Cor. xv: 54. 

And death shall be no more * * * the first 
things are passed away. Rev. xxi: 4. 

That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
of things in heaven and things on earth and things of 
the world below [margin] and that every tongue should 
confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the glory of 
God the Father.— Phil, ii: 10-11. 

I haye placed together these passages of 
scripture in order to suggest the strongest pos- 
sible contrast between what I believe to be the 
truth, and the prevailing doctrine, viz., that 
instead of there being no more death, in the 
final future, death becomes established and 
eternal, having an everlasting life of its own 
parallel with the true life of the blessed. 

Of course it will be claimed that the prom- 
ised disappearance of death refers only to the 
body and the resurrection of the just ; but 
many students of the scriptures are beginning 
to discern that this traditional understanding 
fails to harmonize the Divine Word. Paul, in 
the verses quoted, makes his language as strong 
and comprehensive as possible ; and he was no 
mean master of speech. If words can exclude 
the conception of a permanent world of sin, his 



186 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



do it. Every knee is finally to bow to Christ, 
and bow, not in rebellious rage, when crushed, 
but to him as its Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father. 

There shall be no knee left not bowing in 
loying obedience. 

And this passage is only one of several in 
Paul's writings that point to this result, e. g. 
Col. i : 20; Eph. i : 10. 

The Bible, interpreted in harmony with this 
idea, shows death temporarily victorious over 
the race, in bringing it under the law of spirit- 
ual depravity and animal decay, and exhibits 
the bringing in of the higher spiritual life by 
the Giver of life, as a new stage or unfolding of 
life conditioned upon the consent and coopera- 
tion of man himself. 

That which was distinctively human, being 
set at first by the Creator in alliance with the 
animal, failed to develop itself into the spiritual 
and immortal ; and, reverently be it said, 
God's farther problem was, to see how many 
he could bring up from this created animal life 
to a freely chosen spiritual life, that should be 
beyond the reach of any death. 

Thus the work begun in Eden was carried 
forward in Bethlehem and on Calvary. The 
Triumph of Life is by way of the spirit and 
The Spirit. It is by a new work of spiritual 
creation. In Adam man was created into be- 
ing. In Christ, the second Adam, he is cre- 
ated into immortality. Man's cooperative part 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



187 



in this new creation is his faith by which he 
extends his arms toward the spirit. The spirit 
infuses a new life, and lifts him upon a new 
plane of being, where he regains the union 
with God lost by sin on the plane of nature, 
and becomes " the new man who after God 
hath been created in righteousness. 99 The new 
birth thus bcomes more than a figure ; it is the 
constant work going on upon hearts every- 
where where God reveals himself to men and 
men give themselves to God. 

But those who refuse to lay hold on this new 
and higher life remain under the law of death 
and disappear through a just measure of puni- 
tive suffering. With this punitive work as 
God's executioner Death's office is done, and 
itself disappears. "And Death and Hades 
were cast into the lake of fire." Hades, the 
unseen world, is to deliver up its contents and 
then the empty world-walls are to be flung in- 
to the lake of fire, and after the judgment-sift- 
ing all who are found to have no spark of 
spiritual life are to be cast in after them. 
" This is the second death, the lake of fire." 
This death of Hades must surely mean that 
there is to be no more separation into seen and 
unseen worlds, no longer any such division to 
distress the children of a common Father, and 
no stage of imperfect or suffering life. And of 
course if there is to be no more Hades, there 
will be no Gehenna, which is a part of Hades, 
the unseen world. 



188 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 

And death is to have its death. It is to be 
destroyed. But is it a destruction of death to 
have it passed over into an eternal potency of 
pain in the souls of sinful beings ? Is it de- 
stroyed if it is to remain in a living alliance 
with sin and retain its power to degrade and 
torment ? 

This is rather, as I have said, for death itself 
to become a life. They who have felt them- 
selves compelled to believe in such an issue of 
any portion of the world have been too ready 
to exalt the motive of fear and project the 
cruelty of the human heathen imagination 
upon the heart of God. There may have been 
times and men that could imagine nothing 
better and could interpret the Bible only in ac- 
cord with their own hard hearts, but those 
times are past ; such men are gone. The light 
of eighteen centuries of Christianity has caused 
the belief that redemption can end in such 
dualism to be well nigh impossible. It is no 
longer rationally credible. We do not find it 
in the Bible, only in a mistaken understanding 
of it. The only alternative to the view I have 
advocated, that men in the, time to come are 
likely to entertain, is the triumph of life by 
universal purification as by fire, and restoration 
to immortality, against which opinion I have 
expressed myself with sufficient clearness. 

The subjection of death and its victims, 
those not found in the book of life, to the sec- 
ond death clears the ground for Life— clears 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 189 

the universe of all debris and sign of death, 
save the symbolism of the lake of fire, which is 
made to abide, as we have seen, for ages of 
ages as a witness to God's unchangeable dis- 
pleasure against sin and the necessity of its 
utter removal. Whether this witness even will 
be required to remain present to the conscious- 
ness of those confirmed in life God only knows. 
But sin and suffering having ceased with the 
sinner and death at last being " abolished " 
the world becomes the theater of the life which 
in the words of Paul is " life indeed/' I. Tim. 
vi: 19 ; the pulses of which shall beat without 
fear of cessation or weariness, for they shall be 
of life, life and only life. The eternal world 
becomes the abode of holiness confirmed, of 
happiness perfected, with their continuance as- 
sured. ~No longer will the question be asked : 
Is life worth living ? Life is a ladder ; if it 
had led up to nothing it would not have been 
worth climbing, but S3t up to heaven it be- 
comes worth what it reaches ; it is a part of 
eternal living. And its struggles and pains 
lose themselves in the joys and glory of eternal 
life. Numberless men and women of faith can 
testify that their most solid joy is in feeling 
themselves in the current of a life whose mighty 
onward sweep is bearing them to immortal- 
ity. It is thus that our consciousness of im- 
mortality begins. 

Why heaven is sold to us only at such a price 
of pain we cannot now know, but with the 



190 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



prize in hand we shall probably understand it, 
and the understanding itself will enhance the 
reward. The slaves of sin die with their master, 
" for the end of those things is death. " 

" But having become servants of righteous- 
ness * * * and servants to God we have 
our fruit unto sanctification and the end eter- 
nal life. 7 ' And in this eternal life God shall 
be "all in all." As Origen says,* although 
with a different application: "'And when 
death shall no longer anywhere exist, nor the 
sting of death, nor any evil at all, then verily 
God will be 6 all in all/ " In that final un- 
folding will be understood, as it never yet has 
been, what it is to have been made in the image 
of God. Then having eyes spiritual " we shall 
see him as he is and be like him." 

With this consummation will begin the pa?an 
of the eternities, the Xew Soxg, the song of 
the redeemed, a song no longer of hope nor of 
faith merely, such as we have sung upon the 
earth, but of assured possession in entering 
upon the inheritance of our being. 

Let me conclude by setting before our eyes 
some of the views which the Lord and his 
apostles have given us of that final triumphant 
life. It is glory, for it was " in bringing 
many sons unto glory " "that it pleased God 
to make the captain of their salvation perfect 
through suffering." We begin at a great re- 



De Princip., iii: 6, 3. 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 191 

move from anything that can be called glory — 
begin in ignorance, sin, and pain, but voices 
within, around and from God above us bid us 
strive onward and upward. We often find fault 
with the length and steepness of the way, but 
we forget what it is to be an eternal being. 
We can well afford to be content with begin- 
ning far off and low down as long as an infini- 
tude of progress and growth is before us. 
What would be the blessing of an eternity of 
life if everything was well nigh within the 
grasp of our knowledge and power here and 
now? 

What the unfolding of glory before us is, we 
shall only know as we advance ' * from glory to 
glory." We are assured that the sufferings of 
this present time are not to be weighed over 
against it — shall cease to come into mention 
or thought when we reach it — that glory of 
which the "swallowing up of mortality in 
life " is but the commencement. 

Our blessed Lord himself draws the veil in 
part from this life : "For they that are ac- 
counted worthy to attain to that world * * * 
are equal with the angels and are the sons of 
God being sons of the resurrection. '\ The 
angel is the messenger of God going forth from 
his near presence to do and make known his 
will. Clothed in the power of the resurrection 
life, our work shall be its fitting exercise. Our 
Lord says again: " I will that where lam they 
also may be with me," and Paul echoes the 



0 



192 



THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE. 



word: " So shall we ever be with the Lord." 
To attain to the society of Jesus the son of 
God, the divine man, shall be part of the tri- 
umph of that life ; and as he shall gather all 
the good about him, they shall be gathered to 
each other, and whatsoever joy there is in holy 
companionship shall be the part of the saints 
that have overcome. But this is not all ; 
through his servant John, the revelator, he 
has opened to us still higher glory, still nobler 
offices. 6 6 He that overcometh I will give to 
him to sit down with me in my throne, as I 
also overcame and sat down with my Father in 
his throne." Here is fellowship in triumph 
and fellowship in exaltation and authority — 
a seat on the throne of him who sits on the 
Father's throne. Here we are near to God, 
here ^e are " Kings " in God's service. Surely 
we are given glimpses hereby of the great- 
heights of the far yonder of eternity, not to 
be reached in a day, not in a first aeon, but in 
ages of ages. At the same time we shall be 
"Priests " unto God, which must mark a spirit- 
ual and intercessory work. Yes, redemptive 
saving work doubtless awaits us, which shall be 
the imparting our own triumphant life to 
countless beings, and mayhap in more worlds 
than we now gaze upon in the skies of evening 
above us. 

This is the Triumph to which we are brought 
by the Incarnate Son the Captain of our Salva- 
tion. 



THE THIUMPH OF LIFE. 



193 



It is the gift of our Father "who always 
leadeth us in triumph in Christ/ 9 " nay, we are 
more than conquerors through him that loved 
us." Love, life, joy, and service, triumph 
together. With worship they shall make up 
the fullness of our being in the Forever and 
Forever. 



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